Context: Dr. Claudia Tapia Garcia, Head of Global IPR Policy Research and Academic Relations at Ericsson, hosts the monthly podcast series “IoT & IP Explained”.
What’s new: This week (Spotify link), Dr. Garcia interviewed Mathias Hellman, Vice President of Strategy & Value at Ericsson, about the essential role of standardization, licensing, and IP in the development of 5G and IoT technologies. As well as discussing how 5G use cases are transforming industries, Mr. Hellman explains how companies will often decide whether to contribute technology to standards or keep it proprietary.
5G is undoubtedly enabling – and transforming – a number of industries. Mr. Hellman listed a few of those key use cases (and some that are very much emerging):
- Fixed wireless access: a way to deliver fibre-like connectivity to places that are underserved with this technology. There are multiple places where there are not enough users to economically justify digging into the ground and putting in fibre. This use case opens up connectivity – it “democratizes it”, he says.
- Virtual reality: providing connectivity between a headset and the cloud that is so fast and powerful that you can move the computation to the cloud, instead of doing the computation in your glasses. This means neater and smaller glasses because you can remove the hardware and put it into the cloud instead.
- Sustainability: manufacturers are leveraging 5G to manufacture more efficiently. Efficiency means less waste, higher productivity, and lower energy use. It’s a clear economic proposition too, Mr. Hellman says. If you can connect a factory, you can increase efficiency, have digital twins and proactive maintenance, and that could revolutionize advanced manufacturing in the world. With factories, the key is data latency – it needs to be really quick and 5G can help with that.
But he believes that we still have a way to get in terms of new use cases. And Ericsson is very much invested in that process.
Why is that?
“If you build a product it’s critical you think about your customer,” Mr. Hellman says. Ericsson’s customers are mobile operators, he acknowledges, but the end users are everyone from mining operators to everyday cellphone users. “It’s fundamental to understand use case evolution to understand how to articulate the value of the technologies [the company] creates,” he adds.
Ericsson therefore also helps its own customers create new use cases and new revenue streams, too. “Being part of driving that part of the ecosystem is critical to build the best infrastructure products and deliver the best technology for that side of the ecosystem, too,” he says.
When asked how the communications industry has been able to recreate and sustain a successful innovation cycle from 2G to 6G, Mr. Hellman says it is chiefly thanks to a robust IP system:
“No other technology has been dissimilated as well as cellular technology, and standardization and the IP system are key components of that – you can find connectivity today where you have a lack of electricity. That’s an amazing achievement.”
This success comes from a long cycle of investing billions of dollars in research and development every year, before contributing proposed solutions to standardized settings – some of which are protected by patents – and eventually making those standards available to the public via a high-performing tech platform.
Mr. Hellman emphasizes that the revenue stream that Ericsson gets from the licensing of those standard-essential patents is “critical” to fund and incentivize that cycle. There may be up to 12 years from when the company starts doing fundamental research to when devices are launched and the company gets returns on its investment.
“It’s a long-term thing and requires perseverance but it’s fundamentally built on having IP intercepting the system as well,” he explains.
But what are the benefits of standardization? For society, standardization creates a technology platform that can be put into society and supports a wide range of use cases (like those listed above).
Mr. Hellman says the tricky part for a company like Ericsson is then deciding when it should contribute technology to standards or keep it proprietary. Two key considerations are:
- Whether the feature is important from an interoperability standpoint: “We have lived in a world for a long time where we drive an ecosystem and interoperability is important for us. It can be painful to take something great you have developed and put it into a standardized context, but in the long run that is very incredibly important for the comms sector and our ecosystem.”
- Scale: “Whenever there is scale needed to drive market and component technology forward, Ericsson is one of the major players in this field, but sometimes our market share and presence are not enough to create the scale that is needed. It might need to be across the whole device system, which is beyond infrastructure. Standardization is a great enabler to create that scale.”
Ericsson will also think about product differentiation, whether it has the right IP proposition to back this up, and whether it will provide a long-term advantage for the company.
To round out the interview, Mr. Hellman shared one key lesson he has learned over his 16-year career in IP and technology licensing: the importance of clarity. This applies to both colleagues and the individuals you interact with externally, he explains:
“If you are clear and concise in your views, as opposed to ambiguous and tactical, that will provide a strong foundation for a relationship that lasts. And a strong foundation for trust. Someone once said: ‘To be clear is to be kind.’ And I think there is something to that.”
Mr. Hellman believes IP professionals have become very good at processing massive amounts of information – but then they often communicate it all too, because they like to be complete and accurate. But often, an average audience will only be able to digest up to two key messages.
“You need to budget with the messages you have,” he concludes.