IP Alliances Proliferating To Foil Trolls

Earlier this year, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson signed an agreement for the fair cross-licensing of IP they collectively own in building new LTE equipment and standards.

Recently, Cisco, Intel, Samsung , Alcatel-Lucent, Clearwire and Xohm formed the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) to declare their Wimax patents and say how much they'll charge for their licensing.

And last week Nokia took control of Symbian saying it was going to put ownership of the mobile OS into a foundation which would preserve it as open-source, royalty-free IP.

The industry is seeking these alliances to protect itself against 'patent trolls' who go in for 'patent ambushes'.

The most horrific was the patent ambush which saw Blackberry developer RIM pay out over $600 million in a patent infringement case.

Another situation the industry is keen to avoid is the rampaging litigiousness of Qualcomm on CDMA which involved Nokia in lawyers' fees of $200 million a year.

Last month, the Director General for Competition at the European Commission, Philip Lowe, came out strongly atagainst companies which unfairly use their patent positions to impose onerous licensing fees on the industry.

Theo Claasen, vice president for business development at NXP said recently "Europe has seen what happens when Qualcomm is allowed to have a dominant position in a technology."

And, as Malcolm Penn, CEO of Europe's leading semiconductor analyst company, Future Horizons, put it: "You only get one chance to screw the industry."

Clearly the industry is circling the wagons to try and prevent itself getting screwed a second time.

TOMORROW: TEN BIGGEST WAFER PROCESSING EQUIPMENT SUPPLIERS