Since WiBro, South Korea's original technology, was adopted as an international standard for the 3G mobile communications, interest in international standards has been growing. However, the quality of patent being issued in Korea seems relatively low.
According to Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), Samsung Electronics, Lucent and AT&T hold the majority of patents for OFDMA, a core technology for the next generation mobile communication. For MIMO, Qualcomm, Texas Instrument and Lucent are taking the lead.
With the overall quantity of patents for 4G technology surging worldwide, the US has superiority in quality of patents and marketing power, while Korea gets low marks in terms of patent competitiveness, KIPO reports. The national patent agency explains quality and marketing power is represented by "cites per patent" and "average patent family size." The US and Japan achieves 9 and 7 cites per patent, respectively, while Korea only 2. In terms of average family size, the US and Japan are 17 and 10, while Korea 6.
As the world mobile communication industry is working on standardization, and system development and operation for services such as international or inter-operator roaming, web access, companies are desperate to obtain patent rights for standard technologies. At the same time, they are vying to make their patented technologies approved by standard organizations.
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