Industry Expert Blogs

The IEEE's new patent policy could slash royalty revenues and limit ways to enforce patents, says the chief executive of InterDigital.

Last week, our company sent an open letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the standards-setting organization that brings us Wi-Fi among other things. In that letter, we advised the group we don’t agree with its new patent policy and that in the future our company won’t be submitting IEEE’s Letters of Assurance, but will provide alternative licensing assurances on a case-by-case basis. I want to explain to you -- technology people, like us -- why we chose to do that and what it means.

Our company has almost 200 engineers focused on very advanced technology. We pay to conduct research, whiteboard out advanced algorithms, fly people around the world so they can collaborate on, or argue over, mathematical formulae or interference mitigation schemes, for the benefit of everyone in the industry.

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