A REPORT ON LONG TERM EVOLUTION (LTE) PATENT PORTFOLIO IN INDIA INTRODUCTION IIPRD is an established and well-known Intellectual Property Consulting and Licensing Firm based in India (Delhi, Bangalore, and Pune) and US, with a diversified yet IP focused business practice providing services to Global Corporates, Litigation and Prosecution Firms, Licensing Firms, and allied Entities. IIPRD conducts various kinds of activities apart from providing services and training to the clients, to keep ourselves as well others knowledgeable and competitive in the current market scenario. These kinds of activities also provide insight to the every ongoing process and changes taking place in the world of technology. IIPRD takes initiative and provides full scale report to readers in different aspects. To provide better understanding and scope towards different aspects of patents, IIPRD conducted an exemplary study on Long Term Evolution (LTE) in India, which is one the fastest growing technological trend in telecommunication sector. The following paper provides better understanding about LTE. Let us first understand what led to the study of LTE. NEED FOR CONDUCTING STUDY ON LTE: Enforcement of standard-essential patent (SEP) is rapidly increasing in Asia. Recently there was a case of Ericsson that sued local player Micromax over standard essential patent (SEP) enforcement. In the case of Swedish based telecom giant Ericsson v/s Micromax, the Delhi High Court ordered Micromax to pay up to 2 percent revenue earned from the sales of each disputed device to the court. Ericsson in its litigation filed in the court has claimed that Micromax refused to make a license pact for patents rights usage regarding wireless technology standard innovations such as 3G, GSM (Global System Mobile communications) and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution) and pressed for a ₹100 crore fine against the company as patent infringement damages. Further, Delhi High Court also granted permission to Ericsson officials to join the customs department and check Micromax's devices that are suspected of patent violation. Some of the disputed devices include Micromax Funbook tablets series, Ninja and Canvas 2 smartphone series. Micromax rejected the charges saying that "Micromax is committed to negotiating a FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-discriminatory) license with Ericsson as has Ericsson undertaken to providing a FRAND license to Micromax. Since the matter is pending before the honorable court, it would be incorrect for Micromax to make any further statements on the matter." The interim order from the court is not the result of any FRAND determination by the court but may merely be based on Ericsson's demands. A deposit (presumably to avoid injunctive relief) is not a final resolution of a case. The order mentions that products had been held up at customs over
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A REPORT ON LONG TERM EVOLUTION (LTE)
PATENT PORTFOLIO IN INDIA
INTRODUCTION
IIPRD is an established and well-known Intellectual Property Consulting and Licensing Firm based in
India (Delhi, Bangalore, and Pune) and US, with a diversified yet IP focused business practice
providing services to Global Corporates, Litigation and Prosecution Firms, Licensing Firms, and allied
Entities.
IIPRD conducts various kinds of activities apart from providing services and training to the clients, to
keep ourselves as well others knowledgeable and competitive in the current market scenario. These
kinds of activities also provide insight to the every ongoing process and changes taking place in the
world of technology. IIPRD takes initiative and provides full scale report to readers in different
aspects.
To provide better understanding and scope towards different aspects of patents, IIPRD conducted an
exemplary study on Long Term Evolution (LTE) in India, which is one the fastest growing
technological trend in telecommunication sector. The following paper provides better understanding
about LTE. Let us first understand what led to the study of LTE.
NEED FOR CONDUCTING STUDY ON LTE:
Enforcement of standard-essential patent (SEP) is rapidly increasing in Asia. Recently there was a
case of Ericsson that sued local player Micromax over standard essential patent (SEP) enforcement.
In the case of Swedish based telecom giant Ericsson v/s Micromax, the Delhi High Court ordered
Micromax to pay up to 2 percent revenue earned from the sales of each disputed device to the
court. Ericsson in its litigation filed in the court has claimed that Micromax refused to make a license
pact for patents rights usage regarding wireless technology standard innovations such as 3G, GSM
(Global System Mobile communications) and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution) and
pressed for a ₹100 crore fine against the company as patent infringement damages. Further, Delhi
High Court also granted permission to Ericsson officials to join the customs department and check
Micromax's devices that are suspected of patent violation. Some of the disputed devices include
Micromax Funbook tablets series, Ninja and Canvas 2 smartphone series.
Micromax rejected the charges saying that "Micromax is committed to negotiating a FRAND (Fair,
Reasonable and Non-discriminatory) license with Ericsson as has Ericsson undertaken to providing a
FRAND license to Micromax. Since the matter is pending before the honorable court, it would be
incorrect for Micromax to make any further statements on the matter."
The interim order from the court is not the result of any FRAND determination by the court but may
merely be based on Ericsson's demands. A deposit (presumably to avoid injunctive relief) is not a
final resolution of a case. The order mentions that products had been held up at customs over
Ericsson's claims and will be released now, and the deposit has the purpose of allowing Micromax to
keep importing and selling. The parties shall negotiate for a month. If they can't agree, the dispute
over royalty rates will be referred to a mediator.
Intellectual property enforcement is critical to the growth prospects of emerging economies,
including foreign companies' IP. India does not have the best reputation so far when it comes to
patent protection. By comparison, China is widely considered to be far more advanced in that field
than India. But for a jurisdiction in which IP enforcement is just developing, SEPs -- which are the
intersection of IP and antitrust laws -- pose a particular challenge. The local players in those
economies generally lack patents to countersue over (Indian companies also file far fewer patents
abroad than, for example, their Chinese counterparts), and probably don't own any wireless SEPs.
Further, Ericsson also accuses Samsung of FRAND violations over LTE or wireless SEPs.
Thus, understanding “what LTE is?” is important and therefore we conducted study on LTE in India.
WHAT IS LTE:
There has always been a promising demand for faster data transmission with unprecedented
penetration of smart phones and tablets in both the developed and developing economies all across
the world. This need has exponentially increased with ever-increasing processor speeds in mobile
devices and expected evolution of cloud computing. Also the Strategy Analytics forecasts that
demand for data traffic will grow by 10-12 times by 2015. Therefore, there is a perpetual
requirement for technologies that support faster transmission. Even though global expansion of 3G
networks continue to drive this decade, upgrade from 3G to 4G is inevitable as need for more
efficient data transmission becomes a necessity.
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a mobile communication standard for communicating the data with
high speed. The wireless communication standard is marketed as 4G LTE for mobile phones and data
terminals. LTE is based on technologies like EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), UMTS
(Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), and High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) on GSM
(Global System for Mobile Communications) standards. The motto is to increase the speed and
capacity and these features can be further improved by enhancing the features of radio interference
along with core network. LTE standard is developed by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP),
where it specified in its Release 8 document series and specified the advanced standards in its
Release 9. Although marketed as a 4G wireless service, LTE as specified in the 3GPP Release 8 and 9
document series does not satisfy the technical requirements the 3GPP consortium has adopted for
its new standard generation, and which were originally set forth by the ITU-R organization in its IMT-
Advanced specification. In general, LTE standard addresses the upgrading 3G UMTS to what will
eventually be 4G mobile communications technology. LTE uses evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio
Access (E-UTRA) as air interface, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) for
downlink and Single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-FDMA) for uplink to conserve
power. LTE standard supports for Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), Time Division Duplex (TDD)
communication systems and half-duplex FDD with the same radio access technology as well. The LTE
standard can be used with many different frequency bands. As a result, phones from one country
may not work in other countries. Users will need a multi-band capable phone for roaming
internationally.
The structure of LTE is given below in Fig. 1.
ADVANCED LONG TERM EVOLUTION:
LTE-A, a mobile communication standard, is one of the major technologies for 4G standards that has
been set by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a major upgrade from the Long Term
Evolution (LTE) or 3G. The enhancements from the 3G technology are mainly in the form of
increased peak data rates, more spectral efficiency, reduced latency and increased throughput. The
main features that advanced LTE can offer are:
Enhanced data transfer
High spectral efficiency
Better power management
Increased communication reliability
Improved network coverage, deployment, and security
The architecture of Advanced LTE is given below:
Now after understanding LTE, let us formulate the strategy for conducting study on LTE. The
following steps were involved in our study:
1. SEARCHING PATENT DATABASES USING KEYWORDS:
Patent search engines or patent databases are used for searching patents. A key word or phrase that
will theoretically produce a list of all patents is entered in the patent search engine or patent
database that includes that word somewhere within the patent. Plurality of synonyms for LTE and its
related process are entered as keywords, which will produce a list of all essential patents that exist
for the LTE standard. We enclosed set of keywords in Table 1 and results in Table 2 that include both
issued as well as pending patents in India, which might not be essential (SEP) but does relate to the
eNodeB as a product.
The following are the steps involved in patent searching:
Identify keywords
Prepare search string
Run search string in patent database
Extract Indian patents
Analyse patents based on the related product
Categorize based on the technology:
In the research phase, many patents have been identified relating to enodeB-LTE Advanced
technologies and carefully analyzed for categorization into technical domains as represented in the
diagram below:
Fig. 1
Based on the obtained results and patent categories, a graph is prepared indicating company name
along with number of patents it is having related to LTE and eNodeB. The following graph in Fig. 2 is
prepared depicting number of patents belonging to particular assignee relating LTE and eNodeB and
graph in Fig. 3 indicates number of patents belonging to particular category relating to LTE and
eNodeB, however, the graphs might get changed from time to time depending on new published
applications in the particular domain. (List is last updated on 30th of April, 2013).
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
We were also been able to identify filing trend of patents relating to LTE and eNodeB in India, which
is being depicted in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3
Fig. 4 illustrates top assignees who file patent applications in India related to LTE and eNodeB and
number of publications they are having.
Fig. 4
And Fig. 5 illustrates top 10 technology categories related to which LTE or eNodeB based patents are
granted and patent applications are being published in India.
Fig. 5
2. NON-PATENT LITERATURE SEARCH
The non-patent literature search is conducted base on analyzing technical publications, blog content
and other online resources for identifying relevant patents and standard essential patents relating to
eNodeB. From our study, the following Indian patent family of corresponding essential patents are
identified based on analysis of patent litigation cases pertaining to eNodeB/LTE-advanced
technology.
3. DETERMINING ESSENTIAL PATENTS
An essential patent means that it is not possible to implement the standard on technical grounds
without infringing on the intellectual property protected by the patent. However, the process under
which this determination is made is a bit convoluted and almost entirely hidden from the public
domain. As such, the simplistic methodologies described earlier in this chapter would fail to capture
the intricacies of how a patent becomes essential.
4. PREPARING STUDY FINDINGS
The study report intends to bring clarity to the patent scope of LTE in India by identifying pending
and granted Indian Patents that directly or indirectly relate to LTE or eNodeB base stations and also
tend to comply with the Release 9 specification. Patents were also briefly assessed to evaluate
whether they would read on eNodeB product that complies with the applicable standards. In
addition, the present report identifies the kind of technology that each patent relates to and
categorizes the patents. A total of 1743 results have been identified and 200 results out of 1743
have reported as part of this study herein in Table 2, which include pending and issued patents in
India. Post the identification of patents using paid and unpaid databases such as Questel Orbit,
Indian Patent Office, USPTO, WIPO, among other databases such as ETSI and reported LTE Litigation
cases, an assessment was made of the kind of patents filed, major players, kind of reporting of SEP’s
in ETSI, among other parameters.
Based on the assessment, a further evaluation was made of prevalent FRAND licensing terms in LTE
domain; particularly for base stations, litigation scenario on FRAND terms, outcome of key
judgements, potential impact of judgements in Asian markets, stands taken by major players during
FRAND and/or LTE litigations, among other attributes.
SEARCH KEYWORDS USED
A list of keywords used for conducting patent and non patent literature search is as below in Table 1:
Table 1
Some Search Keywords Used:
1. LTE/ “Long Term Evolution”/ 4G/ E-UTRA/ “Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access”