Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Trolls Like Xperi and Fraunhofer Get Patents and Payments From East Asia

Panasonic



Becomes

Panasonic logo



Summary: Xperi receives some patents from Panasonic whereas Fraunhofer, not quite a patent troll but still a major parasite, receives patent payments from the giant Huawei, a Chinese government-connected firm which uses a lot of Linux

THE demise of software patents in the US is great news (courts typically reject software patents that the USPTO granted), but at the same time software patents are gaining a foothold in China.



Benjamin Henrion correctly said that "no one in the software industry checks the patent database before writing code. If you know at least one human who does it, let's schedule an interview, it will be fun!"

"Not just in software," I replied. "Reading patents only makes the reader more liable (for higher damages)..."

The matter of fact is, in the domain of software which many people use, developers typically browse repositories and code, not patents. That just makes sense. It's common sense. It's better use of time. It's therefore unfortunate that China decided to allow patents on software. Whose clever idea was it?

Based on this new press release, the Chinese government-connected giant Huawei now succumbs to demands from a de facto patent troll like MPEG-LA. They're painting that as "Fraunhofer", but it's that same old patent pool of software patents. That cartel has managed to devour Huawei too. From the announcement:

Global communications equipment provider Huawei has entered into a worldwide patent license agreement with the renowned developer of audio and media technologies, Fraunhofer IIS, for Fraunhofer’s MPEG-4 Audio patent portfolio. The license agreement addresses past and future use of Fraunhofer’s MPEG-4 Audio patent portfolio in Huawei’s products.


Those are purely software; it's all about software patents. Then again, can China pretend to be against them?

"Another Panasonic deal with an NPE," IAM noted, "this time Xperi" (NPE just means patent troll). Panasonic is Japanese, unlike Huawei, and Japan's JPO seems to have gotten a little tougher on patents lately. Is that what motivated Panasonic to offload patents onto a troll? As Managing IP noted this morning :

An increase in IoT players needing standard-essential patents has spurred the JPO to set guidelines. But IP practitioners are concerned the guidelines may not provide enough flexibility in SEP negotiations and will lack clarity


Those so-called 'IP practitioners' just want lots of legal disputes -- the very thing Japan/JPO is trying to prevent here.

Going back to IAM, there's also an article/blog post about it. Offloading patents to a patent troll like Xperi (which IAM was grooming earlier this month) may simply suggest that Panasonic sees no value or purpose for these patents. IAM said:

Xperi picked up a portfolio of chip patents from Panasonic last December, according to USPTO assignment records. It was the second small-scale transaction between the two in the space of about one year. For the publicly traded licensing company formerly known as Tessera, it is the latest in a series of portfolios sourced from Japan, Inc.

Assignment documents show that Tessera Advanced Technologies Inc acquired nine granted patents as part of the December, 2017 deal: five from the US, four from Japan and one from China. The patents appear to be related to various semiconductor technologies, and are packaged along with a number of abandoned or expired rights. The transaction came one year after a slightly larger deal in December 2016 saw the Xperi vehicle acquire around 20 US and foreign patents from the Osaka-based company.

[...]

It doesn’t look like Panasonic and Xperi have been involved in any courtroom tangles. But the relationship comes as no surprise. Panasonic has formed partnerships and completed deals with many of the biggest names among major NPEs and PIPCOs over the last several years.


As we noted in past years, Panasonic even claimed to have open-sourced its patents. We mostly take all that (or interpret it) to mean that Panasonic sees not much value in patents anymore and it gives them away. It previously paid Microsoft for some patents.

Recent Techrights' Posts

New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
 
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025