By Patrick Zhang
(Vice President, Licensing and Commercial Strategy, Via Licensing Alliance)
Across the SEP ecosystem, technology standards continue to grow in both importance and complexity, while courts, policymakers, licensors and implementers are all wrestling with the same problem: litigation is becoming increasingly global and fragmented. Courts in the UK, China, Germany and the UPC are taking different approaches to FRAND disputes, creating uncertainty around licensing outcomes.
This summer, I joined Via Licensing Alliance as Vice President of Licensing and Commercial Strategy. In part, I saw this as an exciting time to join Via because the industry is at an inflection point. As standards expand into new industries and technologies, the market needs more scalable mechanisms that reduce friction, improve transparency and allow innovation to be adopted more efficiently. Patent pools are one of the few proven structures that can help bridge the divide between innovators and implementers as the ecosystem becomes increasingly complex and fragmented.
That possibility is a large part of what attracted me to Via Licensing Alliance. Throughout my career, I have seen how difficult it can be to align the interests of technology creators and adopters. Yet I have also seen that the most durable outcomes emerge when both sides recognize they are part of the same innovation ecosystem.
The reality is that many companies sit on both sides of the table. They invest heavily in research and development, contribute technology to standards and benefit from licensing revenue as patent owners. At the same time, they build products that rely on standards developed by others and therefore become licensees themselves. Some of the strongest relationships in the licensing industry are built with companies that understand both perspectives. They want fair compensation for their innovations, but they also value predictable, efficient access to third-party technology.
That balanced perspective often gets lost in public discussions about SEP licensing, which tend to focus on disputes rather than solutions.
Litigation will always have an important place in the intellectual property system. Courts provide a necessary venue for resolving disagreements and establishing legal clarity. But if every licensing discussion ultimately requires a global legal campaign, something is not working as efficiently as it should.
Today, we are seeing an increasingly fragmented enforcement environment. SEP disputes frequently span multiple jurisdictions, with parallel cases unfolding before different courts and tribunals. The result can be years of uncertainty, substantial legal expense and outcomes that remain difficult for either side to predict. While litigation may sometimes be unavoidable, it should not be the primary mechanism through which innovation is transferred from inventors to the marketplace.
Part of the challenge is that incentives at the extremes create friction. Patent litigation is often tasked with assigning value to a limited number of asserted patents, even when those assets represent only a small portion of a much larger portfolio. Implementers, in turn, may view the resulting royalty demands as disconnected from their perception of the technology’s contribution to the end product. Each side can develop a narrative that reinforces its position, making compromise more difficult.
At the other end of the spectrum, some implementers conclude that delaying or avoiding licensing is the better economic choice. Whether driven by cost pressures, business priorities or confidence in avoiding enforcement, this approach has consequences of its own. When willing participants in the licensing ecosystem bear the costs of innovation while others do not, the result is a distortion that affects the broader market. Refusal to license proven IP does not eliminate costs; it unfairly redistributes them in the short term while greatly increasing the risk profile for the hold out companies in the longer term.
This dynamic becomes particularly significant in the SEP context. Standards are designed to promote interoperability and widespread adoption. Companies that contribute the underlying technology often do so with the expectation that the market will reward genuine innovation through fair and reasonable licensing. When that process breaks down, uncertainty grows for licensors and implementers alike.
What the industry needs is not a victory for one side over the other. It needs a better middle ground.
That middle ground starts with acknowledging a simple reality: technology innovation and technology adoption are mutually dependent. Without sustained R&D investment, the standards that enable global connectivity, multimedia, automotive innovation and emerging AI-driven applications would not exist. Without broad implementation, those innovations would never achieve their full impact.
The objective should be to create structures that reward invention while making access to technology more efficient and predictable.
This is where collaborative licensing models continue to demonstrate their value. Patent pools bring together diverse patent owners under a common framework, reducing transactional complexity and creating a more streamlined path to licensing. They can help licensees gain access to substantial bodies of intellectual property through a single agreement under non-discriminatory terms offered to all, while providing licensors with an efficient mechanism for monetization.
Just as importantly, these models encourage transparency and certainty. Rather than leaving participants to navigate fragmented negotiations across multiple jurisdictions and counterparties, pools can provide clear licensing terms, established processes and a lower-friction route to compliance. In a world where standards are expanding into new industries and connected products are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the need for scalable licensing solutions will only grow.
The SEP ecosystem will continue to evolve. Courts will play a critical role in shaping legal frameworks, and debates surrounding FRAND, valuation and enforcement will undoubtedly continue. Yet amid that evolution, the industry should remain focused on a fundamental goal: creating an environment where innovation is rewarded, adoption is encouraged and unnecessary friction is reduced.
That is the middle ground worth pursuing. And working with the talented team at Via Licensing Alliance, in partnership with stakeholders across the SEP ecosystem, I’m excited to contribute to that effort.