LG’s Smartphone Patent Portfolio – A Treasure Hunt

It was unavoidable for LG Electronics to close its mobile phone division after nearly six years of persistent losses. Although many people would not have anticipated the bleeding business unit to be completely closed, the pandemic and the status of the economy only made it more inevitable. The news broke on April 5, 2021, when LG officially confirmed the shutdown of its mobile phone business segment. Since then, there have been ongoing rumours regarding decisions involving their largely successful patent portfolio.

This article will explain LG's portfolio strength and how its rivals might profit from it.


Portfolio strength of LGE

Along with the constantly on the lookout Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs), LGE's rivals have already started their acquisition efforts. Many NPEs have contacted LG Electronics over the potential purchase of its 5G mobile patents, according to the Korea Times. It is without a doubt worth the effort to make such advancements in order to obtain a desired technological patent set from its vast portfolio. The quality of LGE's patent portfolio is evident from the company's four-year streak at the top of the global 4G standard patents (2012 to 2016). According to the statistics, the Asian technology giant's US patent portfolio contains 22,501 alive/granted patent families. With a total of 17,467 alive/granted patent families in its US portfolio, Apple Inc. has a smaller number of patent families than this.


A deeper dive into LGE’s mobile phone portfolio

Two divisions can be distinguished between the LGE mobile phone company and its underlying patent portfolio:

1. patents that reveal communication technologies as well as all pertinent SEPs.

2.Smartphone features and functionality are revealed in patents.

The first batch of patents, including its revenue-generating SEPs, are the subject of much debate in the technical and IP communities. But in its formal statement, LG made a clear allusion to keeping the communication technology patents and the associated SEPs, saying:

To help further boost competitiveness in various business sectors, LG will keep utilising its mobile experience and developing mobility-related technologies like 6G. Core technology created during the course of LG's mobile business activities over two decades will also be kept.

Mining the gems

In response to our study objectives, a review of LGE's smartphone lineup was done in order to identify some of its finest jewels. The top-ranked patents were discovered to be applicable to the most popular cellphones while ranking the mined patent portfolio using a company-owned proprietary technique.

One of the patents in the top-ranked batch, for instance, is for a smartphone with a dual-display that makes use of the two displays to improve user experience when taking pictures with the camera. Thus, the user can edit while using the other display for comparison, or take both a still photograph and a video at the same time. Recently released dual display smartphones may make use of this patent. In addition to this illustrative instance, a sizable number of patents disclose smartphone features and functionalities that are today popular in existing devices.

To get more information, read entire article about Patent Portfolio




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