Patent Pool Analysis of SEPs

Patent pool analysis of SEPs is the study of the patents that holders have declared to a licensing pool. Pools run programs for particular standards or products, and the larger pools publish the lists of patents declared to each program. Analysis of those lists shows what a program actually contains, who contributed it, and how that changes over time. The analysis here is customized rather than a fixed report.

The major pools that publish patent lists are covered, including SISVEL, VIA, AVANCI and Access Advance. These programs disclose the patents declared to them, which makes the contents open to independent review. Reports from all such pools are monitored, so the analysis can be built around one program or compared across several. If a pool does not publish a list, its contents cannot be analysed in the same way.

The two look at different disclosures. Declarations to standards setting organizations are made by patent owners to bodies such as ETSI, ITU-T and IEEE, and cover patents the owner believes may be essential. Pool lists are published by the licensing program and cover patents accepted into that program. A patent can appear in one and not the other. Many portfolio questions need both sources read together.

A customized analysis is shaped by the question being asked. Common requests include the patents a named company has placed in a pool, the size and composition of a program, movement in and out of a list between publications, and how one program compares with another for the same technology. The scope is agreed first, and the analysis is then built from the published lists.