Standardized technologies are often embedded in both intermediate products (such as chipsets or modules) and end products (such as smartphones or connected cars) that incorporate the intermediate products as components. In principle, owners of patents covering such technologies (standard-essential patents or SEPs) could license their SEPs to the manufacturers of intermediate products, the end-product manufacturers or, to the extent possible, given patent exhaustion constraints, to both.
Monday, July 12, 2021