At the time of 5g popularization, there are disputes over communication technology patents.

Less than two years after the "roulette" of patent lawsuits between Qualcomm and apple subsided, Nokia launched another patent lawsuit against Chinese manufacturers around the world. On July 9, oppo told China first finance and economics that Nokia advocated extremely unreasonable license fees and made oppo make concessions in license negotiations through litigation.

With the combination of intellectual property rights from Nokia technologies, Nokia networks and Alcatel lucent, Nokia has mastered a large number of technologies related to mobile devices and other products. According to the data provided by wisdom bud to reporters, Nokia has applied for more than 7700 5g related patents in the world, including more than 1200 valid patents.

In the view of institutions, patent licensing has always been the "trump card" behind the technology game of technology giants, and also an important part of the "moat" of the market. In the "post 5g era", the prelude of new patent licensing negotiations has been opened.

In a report, global research firm strategy analytics emerging device technology research service pointed out that 5g mobile phones will bring nearly 20 billion US dollars of global patent revenue to patent (IP) holders every year in 2025, and Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm will account for the vast majority of these patent revenue.

5g patent fee "dispute"

Nokia is filing patent lawsuits against oppo, a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer, in many countries around the world. The focus of the dispute is on how much to pay for 5g patent fees.

According to the 5g patent fee standard announced by Nokia in 2018, each 5g mobile phone using its patent should pay Nokia a 3 Euro patent fee. However, in the view of mobile phone manufacturers, the fee standard is too high.

"We have also reached cooperation with Nokia on 4G related patent licensing. The two sides have been negotiating for some time on issues related to the 5g license contract, but Nokia claims extremely unreasonable license fees, and makes oppo make concessions in the license negotiation through litigation, so as to accept its unreasonable license fees. " Oppo told reporters that oppo will actively respond to the lawsuit, give full play to its accumulation and advantages in the field of intellectual property under the premise of full respect for intellectual property, and reach a reasonable license fee to ensure its orderly operation in the world.

It is understood that in the past decade, Nokia has filed patent lawsuits against apple, Huawei, HTC, research in motion and ViewSonic CO in the field of mobile phones alone. Even after falling behind in the smartphone market, the revenue from patent licensing has become an important part of Nokia's revenue.

According to financial report data, Nokia's (patent) license fee revenue in 2019 is 1.402 billion euro, and that in 2020 is 1.487 billion euro.

Nokia 5g related patent application trend

"5g total royalty will account for about 7% of the total wholesale price of 5g smartphones, which is consistent with the previous 4G royalty." Strategy analytics pointed out in the analysis that Ericsson and Nokia together are expected to account for 35% of the global 5g mobile phone patent revenue in 2025, while Qualcomm will account for more than half.

The reporter found that Ericsson had also sued apple, Samsung, domestic Xiaomi and ZTE for patent fees. According to financial report data, Ericsson's intellectual property license revenue in the second quarter of 2021 is expected to be SEK 2 billion to SEK 2.5 billion.

Compared with Ericsson and Nokia, Qualcomm has a stronger voice in the field of mobile phones.

In terms of business segment, the main revenue of Qualcomm comes from CDMA Technology Division (QCT) and technology licensing division (QTL). QCT is mainly responsible for R & D and sales of hardware and software solutions such as chips in wireless infrastructure and equipment, while QTL is the technology licensing department of Qualcomm, which is mainly responsible for licensing the technology patents accumulated and acquired by Qualcomm over the years.

The lawsuit with apple shows the patent structure of Qualcomm in the field of mobile phones.

The patent war between Qualcomm and apple lasted for more than two years. Since the beginning of 2017, the cooperative relationship between Qualcomm and apple has broken down, and the two sides have launched many lawsuits over patent licensing fees. The main dispute revolved around the technology licensing business of Qualcomm. Apple accused Qualcomm of unreasonable intellectual property licensing mode, while Qualcomm accused apple of using the patent of Qualcomm without paying. Apple coo Jeff Williams said an iPhone costs $7.50 to Qualcomm. He thinks that it is unreasonable to charge the patent fee according to the whole machine.

"It may not sound like a lot, but we sell hundreds of millions of mobile phones, which adds up to more than $1 billion a year." Jeff said that Apple originally hoped to use Qualcomm's baseband chip on the new iPhone released in 2018, but after Apple sued Qualcomm over the licensing fee, the latter refused to sell related products to apple, which forced apple to only buy related products from Intel.

"If Qualcomm charges a 5% royalty rate, the $30 baseband chip royalty should be $1.50, which is acceptable to apple. But the charging standard of Qualcomm is to pay 5% based on the price of the whole machine. The higher the price of the mobile phone, the higher the patent fee paid to Qualcomm. " Jeff Williams said that if the agreement is renegotiated, Qualcomm will stop supplying.

In addition, according to the testimony provided by Huawei at that time, in the CDMA parts ordering patent agreement signed with Qualcomm, Huawei must purchase its CDMA chip. If a chip comes from other suppliers, it needs to pay higher patent rates to Qualcomm.

A domestic mobile phone manufacturer, who did not want to be named, told reporters that if it needs to use a chip from Qualcomm, it must pay for the patent, otherwise it will not get the chip“ There will be a certain amount of discount between giants. For manufacturers with small sales volume, the patent fee is charged according to the whole machine sales fee. "

Patent "gold content" PK

From the perspective of industry development, patent fees should respect the principle of fairness, reasonableness and non discrimination (frand), that is, the quotation should not be adjusted because of the applicant's market position and patent reserve. But big companies with large numbers of patents often defend their position by saying that they have created technologies that help others innovate.

Clemens Auguste Hirsch, Nokia's director of European litigation, once said that the company's 5g technology patent can compress, transmit and decode data, while the annual R & D expenditure on connectivity alone is as high as $4 billion.

Judging from the global 5g patent data, Nokia is indeed ahead of most technology companies.

According to public data, Nokia and its affiliated companies have published nearly 300000 patent applications worldwide, including over 43000 valid patents and 42000 valid invention patents. Among the valid patents of Nokia, most of them are communication technology patents, accounting for nearly 34000, accounting for 79% of the valid patents.

Nokia 5g patent layout mainly refers to the patents with 5g field applied by Nokia in category number H04 (Communication Technology). Nokia has applied for more than 7700 5g related patents in the world, including more than 1200 valid patents. Among the patents related to Nokia 5g, the top three patents cited most were cited more than 220 times, with the highest number of 240 times.

Relevant patent experts told reporters that the number of patents cited is to identify which patents have been widely used, and many people use these technologies for reference. These patents are more influential and represent the core innovative technologies in this technology field. In terms of the number of 5g patents, oppo has surpassed Nokia in terms of both the number of applications and the number of authorized patents. However, from the analysis of the core index of patent quality, namely "patent citation", the quality of Nokia 5g patents is still much higher.

Oppo 5g related patent application trend

According to the above-mentioned organizations, oppo and its affiliated companies have published more than 64000 patent applications worldwide, including more than 25000 valid patents and more than 19000 valid invention patents. According to the cloud analysis of wisdom bud innovation words, the key R & D technology topics of oppo are electronic equipment, mobile terminal, terminal equipment, display screen, image processing, wireless communication, camera, etc.

Oppo's 5g patent layout mainly refers to the patents with 5g field applied by oppo in category No. H04 (Communication Technology): oppo has published more than 14000 5g related patent applications in the world, including more than 2000 authorized valid patents. In 5g related patents, the most cited patents were cited 64 times.

Ranking of cited times of Nokia 5g related patents

Ranking of oppo 5g related patents cited times

In addition, referring to the patents with 5g field applied by Xiaomi company in the category number H04 (Communication Technology), Xiaomi and its affiliated companies have published more than 3000 5g related patent applications in the world, including about 390 valid patents. Huawei, another domestic manufacturer, has nearly 26000 patents related to 5g.

In March this year, Huawei released the white paper 2020 on innovation and intellectual property rights in Shenzhen, and announced Huawei's patent rate standard in the 5g field, in which the maximum license fee for a single mobile phone is $2.50.

"Huawei expects the intellectual property revenue to be between us $1.2 billion and US $1.3 billion from 2019 to 2021. In terms of the charging standard of 5g multi-mode mobile phones, Huawei's maximum license fee for a single mobile phone that complies with 5g standard is US $2.50, and provides a reasonable percentage rate applicable to the price of mobile phones." Ding Jianxin, head of Huawei's intellectual property department, said Huawei respects other people's intellectual property rights and hopes to resolve intellectual property disputes through cross licensing, technical and commercial cooperation and other channels.

It is worth noting that, benefiting from the US $600 million patent license, Huawei's net profit increased by 26% in the first quarter of this year when its revenue fell.

"If the enterprise has a very large patent portfolio, it will have a dominant force in the market." The person in charge of the above domestic mobile phones told reporters that at present, Chinese manufacturers are speeding up the application of 5g patents. At the same time, both head manufacturers and small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers will join the patent alliance or actively respond to the lawsuit to solve the problems caused by the "patent war".

But "fairness" is a very difficult word to define. According to the mobile phone manufacturers mentioned above, the great change between 4G and 5g is not only in speed, but also in the fact that 5g greatly increases the number of devices that can be connected to each base station.

According to the data provided by GSMA, as of January 2021, there are 144 5g commercial networks in 57 countries around the world, with the number of 5g connections reaching about 235 million, a record high. With the increasing number of connections in automobile, Internet of things, artificial intelligence and machine learning, it is believed that 5g patent giants will launch new "patent negotiations" to more industries and enterprises.

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