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News that six companies have formed a patent alliance around their WiMAX technology can be interpreted several ways.
I prefer to think of it as hedging one's bets. Patents are one thing and patent pools are another. This could be a way for some large companies who have bet on WiMAX to present a united front as WiMAX and LTE start their inevitable path toward convergence.
The companies involved—Intel, Samsung, Sprint, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and Clearwire—seem to represent the mega-company wing of the WiMAX technology spectrum. With the exception of Clearwire, which is an Intel surrogate, they are all capitalized in the multiple billions of dollars.
Conspicuously missing are the start-ups that have accounted for much more of the innovation in WiMAX chips—Sequans, Beecem, and Wavesat come immediately to mind but there are many more.
Qualcomm is also conspicuously absent and it holds many important OFDM patents. But let's let that one rest for awhile.
The claim of a Clearwire executive that the patent pool is "all about openness and predictability of the business model," is open to interpretation. Predictable cost doesn't necessarily mean lower cost, for example, and how exactly does the new patent pool guarantee that the process is more "open?" Intel, Cisco and Samsung are not exactly renowed in the industry for a willingness to share.
And what should be make of the statement (as quoted by Reuters from a press release): "This approach will focus on providing a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMax products."
With multimode chips and the use of selected SDR techniques very much in the realm of possibility these days, I wonder if the "patent pool" isn't part of an attempt to patent the standard, which should be a contradiction in terms—except in the hands of patent lawyers.
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