‘So many doors opening’: US firms expect boom in SEP work

In this article, four attorneys who have a robust practices that include advising clients on Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) reveal how they have been addressing 5G, patent pools, and other SEP-related trends for existing and new clients grappling with the robust IP landscape in the electronics and software industry.

Sterne Kessler’s Ryan Richardson is one of the featured attorneys. He discussing the prevelance of clients bringing new products to market that involve cellular connectivity with licensing being a significant aspect of overall IP considerations.

Richardson notes, “Historically, our clients had to deal with IP issues in litigation or patent prosecution. Now that some of those same clients are getting approached by the patent pools, the impact of pools on them is big because they’ve never really had to deal with those kinds of entities before.”

He goes on the remark on the relevance of the need for firms to address patent pools when advising clients. “It’s not something you can just ignore.”

Further, Richardson addresses the importance of several aspect of SEP when formulating a strategy for clients, including the number of SEPs in a space, the percentage of SEPs that a pool owns, and the level of litigation in a particular industry. All of these factors are important when advising clients on whether to take a license to the pool’s patents.