SEPs
Huawei or Samsung: Leader in 5G declared Standard Essential Patents (SEPs)?
A new report, jointly released by IP consulting and analysis companies, Amplified and GreyB, disclosed that the top 6 companies (Huawei, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm) account for 64.9% in 18,887 declared patent families. In granted 10,763 declared patent families, 2,893 families have been identified as core SEPs where top 6 companies account for 72.5%.
Huawei was first with 530 patent families and a ratio 18.3%. Nokia and Samsung were ranked No. 2 and No. 3 with 14.6% and 12.9%. respectively.
The report is an update of the previous report “Exploration of 5G Standards and Preliminary Findings on Essentiality” released on May 26, 2020.
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Separately, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced on March 10th that it has ranked first in 5G Standard Essential Patent (SEP)¹ shares according to a patent essentiality study conducted by IPlytics2, a Berlin-based market intelligence firm comprised of economists, scientists and engineers. The findings were published in IPlytics’ recent report: “Who is leading the 5G patent race? A patent landscape analysis on declared SEPs and standards contributions.”
Samsung also ranked second in two other categories: share of 5G granted3 and active patent4 families5, and share of 5G granted and active patent families with at least one of them granted by the EPO (European Patent Office) or USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office).
Last year, Samsung also led in 5G patents as a result of its research and development of 5G standards and technologies.
the top 10 companies own more than 80% of all granted 5G patent families, while the top 20 own more than 93% of all 5G granted patent families. These numbers confirm that there are only a few major large 5G patent owners, but looking at overall 5G declarations, the IPlytics Platform database identified more than 100 independent companies, which have declared ownership of at least one 5G patent.
The 5G patent family statistics presented in Table 1 are not based on verified SEP families. Neither ETSI nor the declaring companies have published independent assessments of the essentiality or validity of the declared 5G patents. Thus, the 5G patent families presented are only potentially essential. Many well-known SEP studies estimate that between 20% and 30% of all declared patents are essential. However, the essentiality rate differs across patent portfolios. To better understand the essentiality rate across portfolios, IPlytics created a data set of 1,000 5G-declared patent families (EPO/USPTO granted), which independent experts have mapped to 5G specifications. Here, the experts mapped the patents for six hours in a first check and then EPO/USPTO patent attorneys double-checked the mapping for a further three hours.
Table 1. Top 5G patent declaring companies (with >1% share)
| Current Assignee | 5G families | 5G granted and active families | 5G EPO/USPTO granted and active families | 5G EPO/USPTO granted and active families not declared to other generations |
| Huawei (CN) | 15.39% | 15.38% | 13.96% | 17.57% |
| Qualcomm (US) | 11.24% | 12.91% | 14.93% | 16.36% |
| ZTE (CN) | 9.81% | 5.64% | 3.44% | 2.54% |
| Samsung Electronics (KR) | 9.67% | 13.28% | 15.10% | 14.72% |
| Nokia (FN) | 9.01% | 13.23% | 15.29% | 11.85% |
| LG Electronics (KR) | 7.01% | 8.7% | 10.3% | 11.48% |
| Ericsson (SE) | 4.35% | 4.59% | 5.25% | 3.79% |
| Sharp (JP) | 3.65% | 4.62% | 4.66% | 5.50% |
| Oppo (CN) | 3.47% | 0.95% | 0.64% | 1% |
| CATT Datang Mobile (CN) | 3.44% | 0.85% | 0.46% | 0.68% |
| Apple (US) | 3.21% | 1.46% | 1.66% | 2.15% |
| NTT Docomo (JP) | 3.18% | 1.98% | 2.25% | 1.9% |
Source: IPlytics
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Superscript Notes:
[1] “A patent that protects technology essential to a standard”, European Commission report – “Setting out the EU approach to Standard Essential Patents”, p1, November 2017.
[2] “IPlytics derived the “essential rate” by creating a random data set of 1,000 5G-declared patent families (EPO/USPTO granted) and mapping it to 5G specifications.” . Available : https://www.iam-media.com/who-leading-the-5g-patent-race-patent-landscape-analysis-declared-seps-and-standards-contributions
[3] “a patent that is granted by at least one of patent offices”, IPlytics report – “who is leading the 5G patent race”, p5, November 2019.
[4] “in active status, which means it has not lapsed, been revoked or expired”, IPlytics report – “who is leading the 5G patent race”, p3, November 2019.
[5] “a collection of patent applications covering the same or similar technical content”, . Available: https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents/helpful-resources/first-time-here/patent-families.html
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References:
https://www.amplified.ai/news/
https://www.greyb.com/5g-patents/
https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-extends-leadership-5g-patents/