The Mobile IP Battle

Most mobile content relies on copyright to protect its intellectual property, but behind the scenes — inside the handset — there is a far fiercer battle going on involving patents. Mobile content runs on hardware and platforms, and it is in these areas where patents are used to bargain and exclude. Large technology manufacturers are using their store of patents to give themselves a market advantage — estimated at around 15% over rivals with no patents of their own according to this article.
“Mobile handset makers get hit with patent payments for processor technology, radio modulation schemes, codecs, storage designs, interfaces, development kits, Java, DRM and many others, all in a device that is made for between $100 and $400, and that needs to get far cheaper for poor nations.”
There’s also an analysis of Nokia’s purchase of Intellisync to gain its push e-mail technology, with the following point: “As an added bonus, and helping to justify the $430m purchase price, Nokia not only gains Intellisync’s store of 60 patents to add to its existing hoard in this market, but also wins control of the platform on which archenemy Qualcomm has built its own mobile email offering, Eudora2Go. Nokia could potentially force its rival to re-engineer Eudora2Go around a different technology, losing it valuable time to market, or charge it high fees for licensing.”
This has a direct effect on mobile content — it effects the price of the handsets and the marketshare of different manufacturers, it effects the type of platforms which mobile content will have to run on and therefore effects the way content creators develope their products. Until now the battle for the attention of the mobile user has been between telcos and handset manufacturers, but as mobile content providers start to go off-deck and build their own brands they will also join the battle… They will be effected by things like the argument that ensued over the OMA DRM standard, and are likely to push for their own interests.
Many telcos and handset manufacturers are seeking assurances that industry standards do not come with high royalty payments, urging ETSI, the European standards maker, to change the way it decides standards.
The article has some advice for telcos (and manufacturers) arguing for an overhaul of the standards system to prevent patent ambushes:” Patents are becoming more, not less, important to the way that vendors compete in the mobile market, and that the royalties issue will not be easily solved. Rather than relying too heavily on the slow processes of the European Commission and standards bodies, the cellcos may do better to emulate Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Korea’s SKT and acquire some IP of their own, so that they too have something to trade with the increasingly royalty- dependent equipment makers.”
It’s practical advice, but it’s certainly not an ideal world…