Patent Attorney and Founder
Um, okay. So, Chad, I wanted to follow up with this standard essential patent you’re talking about, 5G. Give me an example. What is a standard essential patent? You have to, for everybody in the world to be able to communicate in the same way. You go from the US to Asia, or you go from the US to Europe—they all have to be practicing the same standards so that all the cell phones will work in all locations.
So, a standard essential patent, basically, you know, these companies, a number of companies participate in the standard-setting process. So, they go to the standards meetings, they come up with ideas, they collaborate with other companies, you know, but they’re still very active in the standard-setting process. They get together, they come up with ideas, and then they submit their ideas to the standards. What they do is they patent those ideas, and if the standard body adopts those ideas and puts those ideas into the standard, then the patent is considered to be standard essential, meaning you have to practice that patent if you’re practicing the standard. You are practicing the patent.