The Pickle's Secret Recipe Or A Pickle?

The war to lead the 5G regime is on. But there is a lot of twist to the plot – how many patents one holds, how many essential ones, and how well can they be bought or sold?

- Pratima Harigunani

5G is not a new technology landscape. It is a new geographical-construct altogether. If you have been running, winning, or losing the races in telecom and its adjacent industries, none of that horsepower will matter anymore. An ocean is starting from here on. You would need assets that work not on land but in the seascape. Anything will do to begin with – a raft, a canoe, a steam boat and eventually (if you can get to that) a motor beast or a ship. Suddenly having good car engines is irrelevant. You need something else. And that something else is coming from patents and innovations made for the 5G world.

Dr. Tim Pohlmann, Managing Director IPlytics GmbH augurs that the next industrial revolution will see increasing technological convergence as connectivity technologies are gradually integrated into mechanical products. “We will also see the increasing importance of 5G in industries where connected cars, smart factories, smart homes, smart meters and even smart medical devices will rely on 5G connectivity.”

And all that is going to be driven a lot by how 5G innovations happen and get used. “Soon most industries, where connectivity matters, will heavily depend on standardized and often patented standards, which are developed in open, consensus-based, standards-development organizations (SDOs). Understanding the 5G patent landscape allows one to understand the technology leadership positions for technology that will be integrated in almost any connected device,” he adds