

Ask HN: How many patents do you need to license? - jcr

Assume your company has endless capital to invest in building a new
mobile phone, but you own no strategic patents that could be cross
licensed. Your plan is to design and manufacture all of your own
hardware components (processor, graphics, memory, GSM/CDMA, display,
accelerometers, USB, ...) and software (OS, drivers, touch interface,
voice control, video, ...) with all of it based industry standard
interfaces and technologies.<p>Since you're building all of your own parts rather than buying them from
licensed vendors, you are legally required to pay for patent licenses on
everything. For example, to have MPEG support, you'll need to license
the patent portfolio of the MPEG_LA group. To use DDR memory, you'll
have to license a bunch of patents. To use an ARM processor, you'll need
to license a bunch of patents from Arm Inc. GSM? CDMA? Slide to unlock?
And so on...<p>Patent licensing terms (costs) are typically not public information, so
no one can really guess how much all of the patent licenses will cost.
Also, assume you actually can license the needed patents for some fee
rather than being simply forbidden from implementing them.<p>The question remains, how many patents would you need to license to
build your own mobile phone from scratch?<p>If you know the number of patents needed for any specific chunk of tech,
or you even have a rough guess, then please post the number.<p>I guess another way to phrase the question would be, how many patents
are required for typical mobile phones we buy?
======
jcr
The MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

<http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/m2/Documents/m2-att1.pdf>.

$ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} [0-9P]' pat_mpeg2.txt | wc -l 1033 $ grep -i Expired
pat_mpeg2.txt | wc -l 579 $ grep -i Expires pat_mpeg2.txt | wc -l 50

The MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

[http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/M4V/Documents/m4v-att1.p...](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/M4V/Documents/m4v-att1.pdf)

    
    
      $ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg4v.txt | wc -l                                  
        1297
      $ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg4v.txt | wc -l    
         178
      $ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg4v.txt | wc -l 
          22
    

The MPEG-2 Systems Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

[http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/m2s/Documents/m2s-att1.p...](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/m2s/Documents/m2s-att1.pdf)

    
    
      $ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg2s.txt  | wc -l                                 
         240
      $ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg2s.txt  | wc -l                                    
           1
      $ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg2s.txt  | wc -l 
          48
    

The MPEG-4 Systems Patent Portfolio License as of April 1, 2013.

[http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/M4S/Documents/m4s-att1.p...](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/M4S/Documents/m4s-att1.pdf)

    
    
      $ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg4s.txt  | wc -l 
          68
      $ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg4s.txt  | wc -l    
           0
      $ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg4s.txt  | wc -l    
          14
    

The AVC (h.264 - MPEG_LA) Patent Portfolio License as of February 1, 2013.

[http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-
att1.p...](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf)

    
    
      $ grep -E '^[A-Z]{2} ' pat_mpeg_h264.txt  | wc -l                              
        2958
      $ grep -i 'Expires' pat_mpeg_h264.txt  | wc -l                                 
           4
      $ grep -i 'Expired' pat_mpeg_h264.txt  | wc -l                                 
         109
    

Though these are the patent pools available for licensing from MPEG_LA, I
haven't deduped the lists, and I'm sure there are some duplicates. I'm mostly
looking for rough numbers. I'm not trying to pick on MPEG_LA, but they just
happened to be first on the list.

------
mcintyre1994
'Drummond says: "A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely
questionable) patent claims"'
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/04/apple-
paten...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/04/apple-patents-
android-expensive-google)

David Drummond is Google's chief legal officer.

