Litigation Trends, Shared Core Technologies Make Wi-Fi 6 an Attractive SEP Monetization Target (Part 1)

Wi-Fi 6 shares new technology with many patented LTE and 5G. Companies and institutions currently monetizing standard essential patents (SEPs) against LTE and 5G may be looking to increase royalty income from Wi-Fi 6 and 6e. This could mean that the recent controversy over fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) SEP licensing commitments of LTE and 5G standardization participants will spill over to Wi-Fi. The current trend in Wi-Fi litigation suggests that this is already underway, and it is feared that recent licensor-friendly changes in the IEEE IPR rules will only further this trend. .

Increase in Wi-Fi lawsuits

Wi-Fi patent litigation in the US is on the rise, and that trend is expected to continue as Wi-Fi 6 adoption accelerates. The last time we saw a similar trend was in 2011-2013, with the gradual decline of Wi-Fi 4 and adoption of Wi-Fi 5, as seen in the graph below. The proliferation of Wi-Fi SEP portfolios and the rational, non-discriminatory (RAND, IEEE version of FRAND) licensing regime for these SEPs will only fuel the upward trend.

Wi-Fi has been in the spotlight of SEP holders for the past few years due to a lawsuit filed by the California Institute of Technology (“CalTech”) against Broadcom and Apple in 2016. Apple and Broadcom have been awarded $1.1 billion in damages for implementing low-density parity-check error-correcting codes, an optional feature in Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 but mandatory in Wi-Fi 6. rice field. However, in February 2022, records found that his two-tier license for chips was not legally supported, so the damages were voided and a retrial was ordered. A decision is not expected by the summer of 2023. Meanwhile, CalTech expanded its monetization campaign and filed lawsuits against Dell, HP, Microsoft and Samsung. As of December 2022, only one of CalTech’s patents is active and is scheduled to expire in May 2023.

The W-Fi litigation was a pioneer in determining the outline of the F/RAND license agreement required of participants in the standards-setting organizations. 2012 decision Motorola vs Microsoftthe 2013 decision Innovation IP Ventures, LLCand the 2014 Decision Ericsson vs. D-Link All of the covered patents claimed to be integral to the Wi-Fi standard at the time.

of innovation This decision avoided a bottom-up approach to calculating royalties in favor of a top-down model. This is due to Innovatio’s failure to provide a convincing argument for using a top-down model and its subjective argument that it weighs the benefits and costs of alternative technologies and is essential and its various One of the reasons is that the work of sifting through degrees was enormous.

failure in innovation The lawsuit may also have led to changes to the IEEE’s 2015 IPR Rules for the Minimum Sellable Patent Practice Unit (“SSPPU”) established in 2009. Cornell University v. Hewlett-Packard case and 2012 Laser dynamics v. Quantum computer case. Because Innovatio failed to provide the court with “…a legally sound and virtually credible method of apportioning the price of the accused final product to the value of Innovatio’s patented features alone,” the court found that his Wi- I used the price of the Fi chip as a basis. Determine royalties.the court of innovation We set the unweighted average selling price of Wi-Fi chips at $14.85 from 1997 to 2013, when the average price went from $37 to $3.05. During this period, chip prices fell due to a number of factors, including the decrease in silicon used in modern chips and the dramatic increase in production. With each new generation of Wi-Fi introduced, it’s no surprise that the chips that implement the new generation are initially more expensive and then depreciate over time. With Wi-Fi 6, the technology is only three years on the market and the average selling price of a Wi-Fi 6 chipset is already he estimated at $6.57 in 2022, so this price cycle It seems to have started at a lower premium.

the court of innovation The lawsuit sought a $0.0956 award for what was considered a collection of 19 U.S. SEP families (apparently using the PCT’s simple family definition) of moderate to high importance to the Wi-Fi standard. We settled on the usage fee. The court used the industry’s average profit margin of 12.1% at the average selling price of $14.85 for Wi-Fi chipset sales, multiplied by 84%, because Innovatio’s SEP was considered moderate to high materiality. We first derived this rate by Ranked in top 10% of SEPs related to Wi-Fi. This led the court to use a landscape diagram of 3,000 families with granted U.S. patents, truncated from the 3,106 that PA Consulting predicted in 2013 to be potentially essential to Wi-Fi, using Innovation’s Calculated share. innovation The 2013 formula for calculating royalties for a single SEP of medium to very high importance is:

Royalty Rate per SEP $0.00503 = ($14.85 x 12.1% x 84%) / (3,000 x 10%)

Wi-Fi 6 core technology

Wi-Fi 6 shares many core technologies with 3GPP LTE and 5G, including:

• Beamforming (BF) allows you to shape and target transmissions to specific users. BF’s beginnings date back to his work on phased arrays and directional antennas in the early 1900s. BF has been part of LTE since 2009.
• Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) uses subsets of subcarriers called resource units to enable simultaneous communication between an access point (AP) and multiple clients. OFDMA is a multi-user access scheme using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) introduced in 1966. OFDM and OFDMA have been implemented in LTE and 5G since the beginning.
• Multiple Users – Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) enables high-speed connectivity between multiple users over multiple paths. Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) was already the subject of research in the 1970s and 1990s. MU-MIMO is part of LTE and was adopted for the downlink in Wi-Fi 5 and for both downlink and uplink in Wi-Fi 6.

These shared technologies expose Wi-Fi 6 to claims from the vast number of patents that innovated around LTE and 5G long before Wi-Fi 6 was developed. ETSI is essential for LTE or 5G radio access networks (RAN), 70% of them are declared for physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers. Approximately 3% of these active grants use the keywords “beamform,” MU-MIMO, or OFDMA in their claims, abstracts, or titles, which are likely related to Wi-Fi. May only cover part of certain LTE and 5G declared patents. Fi 6 core technology. The timeline below shows the priority dates for this innovation from a 3GPP perspective. As can be seen from the chart below, the main drivers of PHY and MAC innovation, as measured by the relevant patent priority dates, occurred between 2004 and 2009 during the development and standardization of LTE.

BF, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA were also among the many technical submissions submitted to IEEE’s 802.11 Task Groups ac and ax (TGac and TGax) and the High Efficiency WLAN Study Group (HEW SG) during Wi-Fi development. Got attention. 5 and 6 standard. The chart below shows that 41% of technical submissions refer to these core technologies.

BF, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA first gained a lot of attention in 2009-2011, when Wi-Fi 5 was being standardized. BF was part of Wi-Fi 5 when wave 1 was released in 2013, and his MU-MIMO for AP downlink was part of Wi-Fi 5 with the release of wave 2 in 2016. became a department. – 2018 aligns directly with efforts to increase Wi-Fi 6 capacity and reduce the potential for signal interference in the anticipated explosion of IoT devices.

The chart below compares the standardization work and patenting timelines associated with each of the Wi-Fi 6 core technologies. The patents included in these tables consist of patents identified as potentially related to Wi-Fi BF, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA. This is based on (i) a relevant keyword search for patents participating in his Wi-Fi 6 standardization as an inventor. (ii) cite CPC code H0W4; or (iii) cite IEEE and IEEE 802 in the listed non-patent literature.

Comparing 3GPP’s technical submission timelines with IEEE’s technical submission timelines, we see 1-2 year delays and significantly lower levels of input in each core technology case. Additionally, the graph shows that the majority of patents that may be related to Wi-Fi 6 came from innovation during LTE standardization. That’s not to say the patent didn’t come from innovation during Wi-Fi 5 or 6 standardization. The 2015-2018 peak in technology innovation and technical submissions to both IEEE and 3GPP is arguably due to the combined standardization work of 3GPP and IEEE. The graph below shows in more detail BF’s timeline referencing technical submissions by Intel and Qualcomm, which have invested heavily in Wi-Fi 6 and 5G technology between 2014 and 2019. increase.

We can speculate that the delayed focus on beamforming between Wi-Fi 6 and 5G standardization efforts is due to resource prioritization. However, it should be pointed out that both Intel and Qualcomm support IEEE and 3GPP standardization, working with large separate national teams with little overlap. However, there is significant overlap between inventors named in potentially related patents.

More interestingly, after the first draft of the Wi-Fi 6 standard was voted on in January 2017, the beamforming references these two companies made in their Wi-Fi 6 technical submissions increased dramatically. That’s it. In January 2017, it reached only 58% consensus, far below the required 75%. Beamforming may have been one of the first draft issues that required more development. It wasn’t until the third Wi-Fi 6 Draft vote in July 2018 that a consensus of more than 75% was reached. This seems to coincide with Intel’s and Qualcomm’s interest in beamforming in their technology submissions.

The view that many Wi-Fi 6 core technologies are the result of 3GPP standardization is supported by the owners of potentially relevant Wi-Fi 6 patents. Because many of them have declared these same patents essential for LTE and 5G. The table below shows the percentage of potentially Wi-Fi 6 related patents that various industry sectors refer to core technology keywords that are self-declared to be LTE and 5G SEP. .

The chart below shows the patenting focus of the top 10 patent holders for Wi-Fi 6 core technology and target wake time (TWT) respectively. The number of patents granted below is the result of the aforementioned core technology keyword search. It is worth noting from the chart below that many of the prominent self-declared LTE and 5G SEP holders are included in the top 10 list for these core technologies.

Part II looks at how the IEEE’s recent IPR rule changes affect the trends and technologies detailed here.