Denis Keseris, patent attorney at Withers & Rogers, considers whether Huawei is setting the pace in the speculative race for 5G licensing deals.
Chinese telecoms equipment maker, Huawei Technologies, has expanded its patent portfolio in readiness for the opportunities that 5G, the fifth generation mobile network, is likely to bring. But with the launch date for 5G some years away, how can they be sure what the 5G standard will look like?
Despite uncertainty surrounding the scope and definition of the 5G standard, Huawei’s deputy chairman, Ken Hu, recently confirmed the company’s intention to be in a strong patent position when the standards for 5G technologies are being set in the run up to the network’s predicted launch in 2020. Recognising the commercial opportunity 5G represents, the Chinese manufacturer wants to be ahead of the game and is prepared to invest heavily to achieve this.
Neul
Just last year, Huawei acquired Cambridge-based innovator, Neul, as part of a strategic move to gain access to the technological know-how needed to support its vision for driverless cars. Neul has been producing chip sets that will support the transfer of small amounts of data in low-overhead packets in the Weightless standard. Such technology is critical to applications involving machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, such as driverless cars, that rely on the secure and reliable transfer of data.
Another UK-based innovator, ARM Holdings, has been developing low-power chips that are relatively cheap to produce using small amounts of silicon, and it is possible that some of the innovation involved in the production of these chips could also find its way into the 5G standard.
By the time of 5G’s commercial launch, as many as 100 billion devices could be connected to the Internet worldwide, so demand for radio bandwidth to transfer data is going to be intense. Therefore the scale of the changes needed to deliver a network that can host such activity and prioritise usage will pose a real challenge.
A strong IP position
To meet this challenge, 5G will require an unprecedented degree of global cooperation (and device interoperability), and the leading innovators, such as Huawei, are likely to be involved in this. Having a strong IP position from the outset will give them a solid and potentially influential position when it comes to setting the standards that will form the basis of 5G.
Investing time and energy in speculative innovation is obviously a gamble at this stage, but the scale of the 5G opportunity when it eventually arrives could prove worthwhile for early movers. Securing patents for technologies which could become standard essential could open up new markets and generate billions of pounds of income from royalties for patent owners.
The technologist-led, collaborative nature of standard development, particularly in the telecoms sector, means that innovators developing technologies that could find their way into the new 5G standard need to take extra care to ensure they are not disclosing information before filing for patent protection, and this is particularly true because no one yet knows which technologies or features will make their way into the standards.
Despite big-ticket announcements by global telecoms players such as Huawei, this is one field where UK-based innovators can expect to make a significant impact and there is still plenty to play for. However, as progress to the 5G standard is likely to happen incrementally and by way of collaborative R&D, extra care should be taken to protect innovation as it evolves and avoid early disclosure.
Denis Keseris, patent attorney at Withers & Rogers, specialising in consumer electronics and telecommunications
