The point is that an equally good standard could have been written without them.
Agree.
But it doesn't seem to have been, so that argument goes out of the window.
Hence the more general point that not all patents are equal.
At the risk of getting circular, if a patent is essential because the standard does not work in its absence, it could be incredibly innovative, require tons of R&D expense, etc., yet still be comparable in value to one which is not particularly elegant or innovative but whose value is high only because it is essential to a standard.
The technical merits of patents are equalized through the standardization process, a good reason for Q to have bagged out of it. Of course, this would have risked having CDMA taken out of UMTS altogether. Unfortunately, Q was between a rock and a hard place, and we are now at the time when we feel the rock.
I know it sucks, but I have a hard time assigning value to a patent simply because it is a magnificent innovation essential to a standard. In fact, I am having a hard time thinking of a way in which market forces somehow assign more value to the amazingly innovative patent than they do to the humdrum one if both are essential to the standard.
Why would an IPR buyer want to pay more for one essential patent than another? Put another way, why would the holder of a humdrum patent which is nonetheless essential wish to sell a license for its use for any less than the holder of the brilliantly innovative, creative, etc., one asks for his?
I wish there were easy answers, but if there are, I can't see them. The only ones I see require Q not to have agreed to participate in the 3G standards game, but the time for that gambit has long ago passed. If it had not done so, the value of its IPR might have been set by the market.......if the standard used it in the first place. |
