The RFID Consortium has selected the Sisvel Group, a global intellectual property management firm, to administer the consortium’s UHF RFID patent licensing program. The consortium, a group of RFID industry companies holding patents for technologies essential to to EPCglobal and ISO/IEC standards for UHF RFID, will look to Sisvel to manage a patent pool which benefits both patent holders and the RFID industry as a whole.
Under current plans, the patent pool would be a joint licensing program that enables manufacturers to easily access the patents necessary to comply to industry standards. This easy access would in theory both keep costs down and speed up the pace of RFID adoption. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a favorable Business Review Letter relating to the Consortium’s proposed licensing arrangement, a major step in the establishment of the program. The consortium and Sisvel plan to launch the program in the second quarter of 2009.
The Sisvel Group manages intellectual property and maximizes the value of patent rights for firms, offering legal, technical and licensing services in Europe, Asia, and the United States. As part of the agreement with the RFID Consortium, Sisvel established Sisvel UHF RFID, LLC, a subsidiary of Sisvel U.S., to administer the licensing program.
The RFID Consortium is an industry group which hopes to promote the rapid adoption of RFID technology by making patented technology easier and more cost-effective for both manufacturers and customers to access, while protecting the patent-holders’ right to fair compensation, and ultimately keeping the costs of RFID adoption down for the end user. Current members of the consortium include 3M, Zebra Technologies, Motorola, and ThingMagic, among other major RFID developers. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/rfidnews-4.gif)
