Fourteen LTE patent owners from eight countries met in San Francisco last week to create the framework for a patent pool to endorse the adoption of the LTE standard worldwide.

“With LTE deployment now an operator reality, the economic logic of moving development cycles ahead to commercialization through patent pools is stronger than ever before,” said Frank J. Bernhard, Technology Economist and Managing Principal at Supply Chain and Telecommunications Practice, OMNI Consulting Group. “Our research shows how patent pool licensing demonstrates certain efficiencies in minimizing product life cycle costs while more quickly generating revenue productivity. From an industry perspective, this translates to a significant competitive advantage in moving technologies, such as LTE, to the foreground.”

The companies who are working with Via Licensing to form an LTE patent pool represent a comprehensive group of leading LTE stakeholders from China, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States. The next meeting is scheduled for March 11-12 in Washington D.C.

Via Licensing is the only patent license administrator to announce any plans to form patent licensing programs to support the broad spectrum of technologies that make up the 4G ecosystem including LTE, IEEE, 802.11n, and WiMax.

“We are pleased with the progress of the recent LTE pool discussions and the participation of essential LTE patent owners from across the globe,” said Jean-Michel Bourdon, President of Via Licensing. “The recent discussions provide critical input to our LTE patent licensing program helping address the needs of our partners across the 4G wireless ecosystem and facilitating market delivery of an LTE license on an aggressive time schedule.”

Photo Courtesy of SF Brit via Flickr