In the past few months there has been an unusually large amount of patent litigation in the field of 3G mobile technology. The situation is so complex that it is very difficult to see what is really happening.

Nokia, Broadcom, Qualcomm and InterDigital have all been particularly litigious. Nokia and Qualcomm had a cross-licensing agreement that has now expired and each has been accusing the other of various infringements for several years. Broadcom recently won a case against Qualcomm, which has resulted in some Qualcomm chips being banned from sale in the US. This month, InterDigital accused Nokia of infringing its patents. The story goes on and on.

All this activity costs the firms involved huge amounts of time, effort and legal expenses; so why do they do it? The answer, of course, is money. The number of units sold in the mobile phone business is astronomical so a saving of only a few pence per handset is extremely valuable, especially if it is at the expense of a rival.
To understand how we got into this situation we have to go back to the creation of the standards for 3G systems. It is normal practice in standards work for participants to declare techniques where they own intellectual property. Most standards bodies now insist that technology will only be included in the standard if a statement is made that it will be licensed on a fair and reasonable basis. These statements are publicly available and the scheme generally works well.

The usual situation is that companies holding patents agree not to sue each other and very little money changes hands. This is all very cosy and keeps the price of products down. In the case of 3G, there are huge numbers of patents held by quite a few companies. There are many cases where licensing deals could not be agreed or have expired. This is bad news for the established players and even worse news for new entrants who, with few patents of their own, have a huge and expensive task of licensing the technology they need.

There have been several attempts to create a central licensing system for 3G patents; all have failed. I fear that greed has been a significant factor.
All this has created animosity and a lack of trust among the major players, resulting in the spate of patent litigation.

It is tempting to say that the patent system is broken and needs replacing. However, it has worked reasonably well for over five centuries so we should think carefully before going down that road. Let’s hope that the firms can find ways of resolving their differences and spend their money on keeping the prices of phones down instead of on damages and legal fees.