Context: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has recently rolled out several updates to its patent search database, PATENTSCOPE, in an effort to improve transparency around standard-essential patent (SEP) ownership (April 30, 2025 WIPO announcement).
What’s new and direct impact: WIPO and patent pool operator Via Licensing Alliance today announced a partnership which will see the latter contribute standard essentiality data to PATENTSCOPE, providing pool-verified information on “a substantial number of SEPs associated with its licensing programs”, according to a press release.
Wider ramifications: Via is the second pool operator to publicly announce a partnership with WIPO on providing pool-verified essentiality data to PATENTSCOPE, following Sisvel (January 27, 2026 WIPO announcement). WIPO had already launched a feature to search for “declared SEPs” last year; this covered patents declared as essential to standards adopted by three of the main standards developing organizations (SDOs). By adding data from pool operators on top of this, WIPO can significantly improve the quality and granularity of PATENTSCOPE’s SEP capabilities. That’s because pool operators like Via and Sisvel spend a lot of time and money on continually assessing the essentiality—declared or potential—of their participating licensors’ patents.
Via’s licensing programs, for example, “depend on independent third-party experts to evaluate patent essentiality”, according to today’s announcement. This in turn stands to improve transparency and accessibility for the wider patent marketplace, by having more SEPs readily searchable on a free-to-access global database.
“One of the major value-adds of patent pools to the licensing ecosystem is to provide
transparency around the pricing of patent rights,” Via President Kevin Mack said in a statement.
Patent pools have likely enabled the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of SEP licensing deals, many of which would otherwise have been impossible, and, where possible, only through litigation or expensive and time-consuming bilateral negotiation (April 21, 2026 ip fray opinion). It’s safe to say that the operators of those pools possess an absolute treasure trove of data that, when combined with a global, open platform like PATENTSCOPE, can bring much-needed transparency to the patent licensing market.