Standard essential patents are...essential

Forbes has an interesting article on standard essential patents (SEPs). You can read it here. http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2014/01/16/a-way-to-mitigate-smartphone-patent-litigation/

The article often points to Qualcomm's 6 billion dollar /year in licensing royalties (for CDMA patents) as though it were an example is an in the breakdown of the SEP system. 

However, the article fails to note that CDMA is not an obscure technology foisted on an industry. CDMA is the one of the most widely used cell phone communication standards on the planet. 

The whole purpose of the SEP system is to provide a reasonable royalty to the inventor of technology that the market determines is the best way to implement a solution to an industry-wide issue. 

If the industry is unable to perform this function, as the article implies ( noting the increased politicization of the process ), then why entrust the process to industry?  Forbes appears to be making an argument that the market, as it relates to SEPs, has failed.

If un-elected industry officials can not pick technological winners and losers, why not ask the un-elected bureaucrats to do so? In that scenario, some collection of professors, lawyers and government appointees could hash out some solution which results in a standard, non-negotiable license applied across the board.

If that outcome feels less than appealing, then the basic premise that the system is failing needs to be reevaluated.

If your technology undergrids global communications, you should be compensated for it, regardless of if you build every piece of equipment or not. The fact that different factions would argue for their technology is not a break down in the system, it is the system functioning as it was intended.

Jordan Garner
(c) 2014 Moorsgate Media