Introduction | on September 7, 2019, tencent technology Open Day, 5 g special multimedia in tencent coastal building perfect ending. Experts from Tencent Multimedia Lab brought wonderful sharing on 5G technology and standards, revealing many mysteries about 5G. This article is by Xu Jianbo, an intellectual property expert from Tencent. The theme of this article is “The Significance of Intellectual Property rights for 5G”, which mainly introduces 5G technology itself, 5G standards and essential patents for 5G standards (SEP).
About the author: Xu Jianbo, an expert in intellectual property department of Tencent, has been engaged in intellectual property work for many years, involving technical fields such as 5G/802.11ax/LoRa/ autonomous driving, etc. He has rich experience in obtaining, licensing and litigation of standard essential patents.
One, the introduction
This paper will mainly introduce 5G technology itself, 5G standards, and 5G standard essential patents (SEP). Here, I suggest that we first establish a basic concept of standard essential patents:
First of all, a Standard Essential Patent is a definition. It’s called a “Standard Essential Patent”. It’s a Patent that covers technologies that must be used in a product or business, and the technology used must conform to existing industry standards.
Secondly, to understand its necessity, why is it called “Essential”? Because it is necessary to adopt different strategies according to the intellectual property policies adopted by different standards organizations.
In summary, SEP is a hybrid of patents and standards, and its necessity means that these are important technologies that cannot be easily replaced.
After we have this basic concept, we can start to understand 5G technology itself and 5G standards, and we will have a clearer understanding of SEP.
Ii. Brief introduction to the development of 5G technology
1. Changes from 1G to 5G
The change from 1G to 5G is a dramatic history of communications. As shown in the figure below, we can view the development process from two different dimensions, such as mobile phone form, time node, business type and star enterprise.
Here we focus on business types. In the 2G era, short messages were added. In the 3G era, E-mail and Internet surfing appeared. In the 4G era, video and games appeared. But for 5G, we start from the business point of view, although 5G is very concerned about the word, but at present there is not a new 5G service in 4G.
Also, take a look at the star companies of different eras, i.e. some iconic companies. The 1G era was dominated by MOTOROLA; In 2G it was Nokia, and later It was Qualcomm and Apple. In the 5G era, huawei and Samsung are likely to take the lead. The two companies make mobile phones and communications equipment as well as chips.
2. Technology is not the only reason for the development of mobile Internet
The reason behind the growth of the mobile Internet is not just 4G technology. But also the development of transmission technologies (especially fiber-optic networks, From 2M broadband -> 100m broadband), the development of wireless communication standards (especially modulation coding technology and multi-antenna technology), the development of audio and video standards (with smaller bandwidth to carry more audio and video streams), the development of semiconductor technology (process from 65nm in the 3G era to the present 7nm).
In terms of hardware, ubiquitous intelligent terminals with smart phones as the core are developing rapidly. In terms of software, the mobile operating system with the app store as the core is rising strongly.
3. To the future, the road to 5G
So what does 5G look like going forward?
(1) Demand for 5G
First, let’s look at the related requirements.
As shown in the figure below, 5G has six performance indicators: user experience rate, link density, traffic density, end-to-end latency, peak rate, and mobility. In addition, there are three efficiency requirements: energy efficiency, spectral efficiency and cost efficiency. Note: The following figure refers to the 5G requirements of imT-2020 propellant group.
(2) 5G scenario
Then, let’s look at the relevant scenario.
With enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-high reliability and low delay communication and mass machine communication, the related scenarios are also very rich. As shown in the figure below, it includes industrial, medical, autonomous driving, smart city, smart home, cloud office, cloud games and many other scenarios.
Iii. Introduction of 5G standards
1. Evolution of communication industry chain
(1) Smartphone sales
Think back to the top five smartphone vendors in 2009: Nokia was the leader at the time, shipping more than 67 million devices, followed by blackberry in second place, Apple in third with 25 million, HTC and Samsung. At that time, 170 million smartphones were produced.
Look at the capacity of smartphones sold in 2018 — 1.4 billion units. Samsung tops the list with nearly 300 million units, followed by Apple and Huawei with nearly 200 million units, followed by Xiaomi and OPPO.
To sum up, Chinese smartphone makers have shipped very fast in the past decade. By 2018, China had three of the top five handset makers, with the sixth VIVO shipping around 100 million.
(2) Infrastructure
Regarding the infrastructure in the communication industry chain, we usually know the base station (signal tower) most.
In 2000, there were many communication equipment companies, including Ericsson, Lucent, MOTOROLA, Nokia, Nortel, Siemens and Alcatel. At that time, the communication market was “seven countries and eight systems”, with eight manufacturers from seven countries and most of them were foreign.
By 2015, the share was more or less 50-50 — Ericsson and Nokia, huawei, ZTE and Samsung. Over the past 15 years, there have been fewer manufacturers and share has become more concentrated.
In summary, the equivalent of European and North American telecom-equipment firms has disappeared, many of them merged. Telecom manufacturers in the Asia-Pacific region: Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, especially with IoT and 5G network deployment. Samsung is relatively unknown in the 3G and 4G era, but the 5G era is still very strong.
2.5g technology timeline
Let’s look at the timeline of 5G technology from standards, networks and terminal devices. As shown in the picture below, THE 5G standard was launched in early 2017 or even at the end of 2016, and the first version was completed around May 2018. Below is 5G R16, equivalent to the second version of 5G. The United States and South Korea began commercializing 5G late last year. At that time, South Korea secured the commercialization of 5G one day earlier than AT&T in order to compete with the first 5G market.
China is taking a solid step. At least in terms of 4G, we can say that we have the most base stations and the most complete signal coverage in the world. 5G is being rolled out in about 40 cities. Almost all provincial capitals and developed cities, almost the top 40 in GDP, will experience 5G this year, and Shenzhen will certainly have no problem. There must be a mobile phone before the network, there is no mobile phone experience.
3. 5G connection
We know that connection is the first step to enter a smart society, as shown in the picture above. There are three circles here, the first personal circle, wearable devices, mobile terminals, etc., which should be mostly done. What we are doing now is creating smart home, including immersive environment and cloud office. Industrial Production 2025 is equivalent to a third circle, connecting industries such as industry, hospitals, nursing and education that were previously not connected or not connected enough. That’s what we’re going to do.
Iv. Introduction of 5G Standard Essential Patents (SEP)
1. SEP is introduced
In the introduction, we have provided a brief introduction to the standard essential patents:
First of all, a Standard Essential Patent is a definition. It’s called a “Standard Essential Patent”. It’s a Patent that covers technologies that must be used in a product or business, and the technology used must conform to existing industry standards.
Secondly, it is necessary. Why is it called “Essential”? Because it is necessary to adopt different strategies according to the intellectual property policies adopted by different standards organizations.
In summary, SEP is a hybrid of patents and standards, and its necessity means that these are important technologies that cannot be easily replaced.
2. The importance of standard essential patents to the communication industry chain
So why are standard essential patents important to the communications industry chain?
It can be understood through the Formula of the Game Of Super Mario. Think of Mary as a company before she gets bigger. She eats a fruit called SEP and becomes very powerful. An enterprise with SEP needs a lot of RESEARCH and development resources. If there is a strong research and development, naturally the enterprise will get a relatively rapid growth. If a company has SEP, it has a very important weapon. Because you are technologically advanced, you can either license it to someone else or get someone else to charge you for it. That’s why today I’m going to talk about standard essential patents (intellectual property rights) that are very important.
In the 4G era, the market share of standard essential patents is ranked from large to small: Qualcomm is the largest, followed by Samsung, Huawei, Nokia, Inter Digital, followed by Ericsson, ZTE, LG and so on.
The 5G era is dominated by Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, ZTE and others.
From 4G era to 5G era, the ranking of standard-essential patent holders will change, and More And more Chinese companies will play a more important role in 5G arena.
3. How to obtain SEP?
The first step is to start pre-research, rehearse, do not go after all the hot, it must be very late. The second is Standard developing process. The third step is that the standard text has been approved by the board and becomes the de facto standard. The fourth step, there is a standard necessary patent, to make a statement to the official, if there is no honest account of their application for patents, the use of the final patent to be limited. Step five, you have standards-compliant products out there, and the company that holds the necessary patent for the standard can collect a license fee. In the popular three steps, the IDEA is protected by patent and finally makes money.
4. Licensing trends in cellular communications patents
Licensing trends for cellular communications patents are shown below. In the early stage of 2G and 3G, patent licensing is mainly about cross-interests between manufacturers, playing the dual roles of equipment manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers. In the mid-to-late 3G and 4G phases, the mobile phone business of the original 3G or 4G patentees gradually disappeared, and they retreated to communication devices, charging patent royalties from Apple and Samsung.
In the 5G phase, licensing fees will target high-value connections, such as smartphones and connected cars.
It is foreseeable that 5G will develop at a high speed. Let’s explore the future world of science and technology together — with more development of science and technology, life will be better.
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