The Role of Patents in the GSM Standard Setting Processes

More and more patents are incorporated in technical standards in the information and communication industry, which is profoundly changing the state of international standardization. With the case study of GSM standard, the role of patents in the process of designing GSM standard was studied through drawing patent map and patent citation tree. The results show that patents provide technology base for the development of technology solution related to the standards, which speed up the standard-setting processes. The companies own patents become the main promoter of the standardizations, which can affect the intellectual property policies of the standardizations bodies. In addition, making patent application related to technical standards is a key to realize the catch-up strategy in standardization.