WiMAX IP holders band together for the Open Patent Alliance

A consortium of a half dozen WiMAX technology patent holders have announced the formation of a patent pool, called the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) that aims to help its members obtain access to patent licenses from their owners at a predictable cost. OPA's six founding members are Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung Electronics and Sprint. OPA's mission statement is to advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model that will stimulate a larger WiMAX industry through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications worldwide.

OPA plans to aggregate the essential patent rights that are required to implement the WiMAX standard in an effort to provide a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for features required to develop WiMAX products. OPA takes issue with current licensing practices which "bundle" all features--both necessary and unnecessary into royalty charges, which raises royalties. OPA also aims to account for cross-licensing between members within the pool.

While OPA was founded by only six companies in the WiMAX ecosystem, it expects to add six to nine more companies that will ensure that the organization has covered all the essential WiMAX patents. The Alliance plans to issue a call for these patents and a third party reviewer, which it calls a "patent referee" will evaluate the submissions and determine how essential they are to the WiMAX standard.

While the OPA initially will focus its efforts on the WiMAX standard, it may work with other industry groups in the future, which may indicate why the group chose not to include WiMAX as part of its name.

"Intel's vision in driving the formation of the Open Patent Alliance is to bring the openness of the Internet and computing industries to the wireless industry and WiMAX" said Sriram Viswanathan, vice president, Intel Capital and general manager, Intel WiMAX program office. "By facilitating an open intellectual property rights model, we expect the alliance to in turn create a more competitive, innovative and broader WiMAX industry that ultimately benefits the consumer with more choice for WiMAX technology and services."