Standard Essential Patents (SEPs)

Standard Essential Patents” (SEP) are patents that claim inventions that conform to a given set of standards or technical standards (published literature containing technical specifications that develop protocols or industry-specific guidelines in product development). Such Standard Essential Patents (SEP) are essential in generating lucrative revenue for their owners, creating opportunities for cooperation in the market and benefitting consumers. Adopting technical standards can benefit manufacturers, businesses, consumers and even governments. Usage of SEPs is governed by policies defined by Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs), wherein SEP owners voluntarily commit with the SSO to license their relevant patents to implementers of the standards on Fair, Reasonable and Non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

Yet, implementation of SEPs currently face practical challenges, arising from declaration / over-declaration of SEPs, licensing agreements between SEP owners and implementers, and essentiality assessment of SEPs.

SciTech Patent Art (SPA) offers extensive services related to SEPs; given the experience of the company’s team, which includes experts from the Electronics and Telecommunication domain, and their experience of working on SEPs for many years. Our services include:

  • Mapping of patents to standards
  • Developing claim charts
  • Searching for SEP-related products
  • Verifying essentiality of SEPs

SPA conducts search and analysis through experts who have IP knowledge and domain expertise in the telecommunications sector. In addition, SPA’s analysts have access to proprietary tools, such as BridgeIndex™, the automated Claim Chart Generator, which divides a claim into multiple elements based on the functionality / component; and AI/ML tools and Deep Web search techniques, which are integrated in our overall workflow process to deliver comprehensive coverage.

Our typical workflow process includes some of the following key process steps:

  • Review client request from both a technical and business perspective
  • Leverage SPA’s proprietary and automated tools such as BridgeIndex™, the automated Claim Chart Generator and SPA’s Deep Web Search tool to search across multiple Standard Setting Organization websites such as ETSI.org, 3gpp.org, etc.
  • Screen and identify relevant technical specifications
  • Analyze and map each claim element / patent drawings to technical specification
  • Provide rating of claim elements, that indicate essentiality score
  • Provide summary of analysis for claims and technical specification and comments of the analyst

At SciTech Patent Art, we are backed up by our 20+ years of experience in providing concise findings based on technical analyses, our responsiveness to clients, depth of expertise and attention to detail.

We have extensive experience in SEPs working for many SEP owners and implementers.

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