PA’s patent evaluation skills help Siemens strengthen its Essential IPR portfolio in WCDMA and WiMAX
'Essential' patents are embodied within a standard (such as WCDMA, cdma2000 or WiMAX) and are infringed by all standard-compliant equipment. This makes Essential patents very valuable. Siemens has an extensive portfolio of Intellectual Property (IP) covering a wide range of communications technologies.
To optimise licensing revenues, Siemens’ licensing division needs to understand which patents are Essential to which communications standards. But this is difficult: licensing departments often do not have in-depth knowledge of all the relevant communications standards – and it can be difficult to get access to engineers with relevant skills.
Initially for WCDMA, and subsequently for cdma2000 and WiMAX, PA used its rapid patent evaluation skills to locate potentially Essential patents from large candidate lists provided by Siemens. PA’s engineers then worked with Siemens’ patent attorneys and engineers to evaluate these potentially Essential patents in detail, including developing claim charts where appropriate.
PA’s efforts helped Siemens grow its Essential IP portfolio in the three technologies and present a clear picture of the portfolio to its licensees.
“PA’s ability to quickly evaluate patents has been a great help in optimising the performance of Siemens’ wireless communications patent portfolio”.
Peter Berg, Siemens' Head of Licensing and Transactions, Corporate Intellectual Property
