LexisNexis launches 5G SEP owner data cleaning initiative, aims to reduce “systemic bias”

Context: The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) declaration database is the largest of its kind, currently containing over 555,000 declared patents and 102,943 patent families as of October 31, 2024. Today, many ETSI-declaring companies self-declare patents at the earliest possible stage to avoid the risk of late-declared patents then being ruled as unenforceable. This, however, means that ETSI’s database will often include unpublished provisional or priority patents and any top-down analyses of 4G or 5G patent owners can become biased, underrepresenting the patent portfolio size of companies that share less information while favoring those that declare more extensively. According to LexisNexis, 40% of self-declared patents cannot be directly matched to normalized and cleaned patent information, while roughly 20% of matched numbers result in false positives due to the ambiguity of patent numbers.

What’s new: LexisNexis has today announced an initiative (“Cellular Verified”) to solve this issue. Over the course of a year, the firm collaborated with over 30 of the top 5G patent-holding companies, to match, clean and verify its database of patent families with that of ETSI’s (LexisNexis Cellular Verified initiative page). The initiative provides a “clean, unbiased” database of declared patents, and provides data updates every week to ensure it is current, it has stated.

Direct impact and wider ramifications: LexisNexis said it has already achieved 99.9% data accuracy through this initiative, while Alan Fan, chief IP officer at Huawei (who took part in the collaboration) said the initiative is a “testament to the power of industry partnerships in driving meaningful progress and innovation forward.” Fan also noted that Cellular Verified provides “clarity to the market” – a key aim of the proposed EU regulation on standard-essential patents (SEP).