Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung, Sprint to form WiMAX patent pool

Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel Corporation, Samsung Electronics and Sprint plan to get together to form Open Patent Alliance (OPA) to accelerate the widespread adoption and deployment of WiMAX technology and products.

OPA will advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model, thus stimulating a larger WiMAX industry that supports innovation through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications globally.

WiMAX is a 4G, IP-based broadband wireless technology that provides low-cost, multi-megabit speed and greater throughput for the mobile Internet era of video-rich content and bandwidth-intensive applications. It is based on the IEEE 802.16e standard.

To accomplish its goals, the OPA will form a WiMAX patent pool to help participating companies obtain access to patent licenses from patent owners at a predictable cost.

The patent pool will aggregate essential patent rights needed to implement the WiMAX standard as defined by the WiMAX Forum and the IEEE 802.16e standard. To help ensure product differentiation and interoperability at a more predictable cost, this approach will focus on providing a more competitive royalty structure by charging only for the features required to develop WiMAX products.

The patent pool will incorporate a variety of royalty licensing solutions, including accounting for cross-licensing among individual members within the pool.