IP Watchdog: InterDigital’s story: fostering industry solutions and profiting from its growth, by William Merritt
This post originally appeared in IP Watchdog on February 6, 2014.
It’s no secret that the regulatory environment is challenging for companies that license patents – in our case, patents that are deemed essential to wireless standards and that our company, InterDigital, has developed in-house over the course of multiple decades, and continues to develop today. Some of the companies that dominate the wireless market today had little or nothing to do with the development of the standards that have contributed so much to their success, so they make every effort to devalue standards participation. And many in Washington lend them a willing ear, and take up arms to wage their battle for them.
One of the greatest frustrations for me is that so much of this rests on a bedrock of total miscomprehension of how standards are developed, the enormous cost and risk of investing in standards development, the value that standards provide, and the kind of licensing practices that have made the market successful, benefitting everybody. Late last year in New York, I met with a reporter for one of the primary tech websites in the world, and he dismissed standards development. It became apparent he didn’t understand how the process worked at all. When we asked him how he thought these things got developed, he said that he “figured there must be an engineering organization somewhere that did it.” And this is from the legal correspondent of a major tech website, someone whose articles influence debate!
He didn’t realize that it was private sector companies – companies like ours – that committed significant engineering time and resources, and competed to develop the best solutions, and in so doing committed to licensing them fairly. So – for his benefit, should he read this, and for the benefit of anyone involved in the debate – I’ll describe our company’s story, and draw some conclusions about what should and shouldn’t be done to protect, foster and incent innovation that benefits everybody.
For the full article, please visit IP Watchdog.