Patents that have been declared as essential to technological standards adopted at three Standard Developing Organizations (SDOs) are now marked as such and searchable in PATENTSCOPE.
A Standard Essential Patent (SEP) covers an invention the use of which is necessary to comply with an industry standard governing a certain technology.
Companies that operate according to standard practices must license their SEPs under FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms:
- Fair – Licensing terms must not be unfairly advantageous to one party.
- Reasonable – The fees should reflect the actual value of the patented technology.
- Non-Discriminatory – All licensees should have access to the patent under similar conditions.
With its recent update, PATENTSCOPE includes information for patent records where individualized SEP declarations were made at either of these three SDOs:
- ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) – this SDO leads the development of mobile and wireless communication standards that include 4G and 5G.
- IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) – this SDO maintains responsibility for Wi-Fi technology, as well as multiple networking standards.
- The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – the standardization branch of ITU establishes worldwide communication and broadcasting standards. PATENTSCOPE currently features the declarations made at ITU-T.
New dedicated fields to specifically search SEP declarations, and a new tab Declared SEP were implemented. Find out more in our free upcoming webinar on May 15 at 8:30am CET: