August 26, 2026, 18:17 GMT | Insight
Sisvel rapidly assembled its cellular point-of-sale patent licensing platform after private negotiations and courtroom clashes demonstrated demand for a collective mechanism in a well-established technology sector, POS Program Manager Sven Torringer told MLex.
Sisvel’s patent pool for cellular point-of-sale, or POS, devices came together faster than expected after bilateral licensing activity and legal disputes signaled that the market was ready for the offering, POS Program Manager Sven Torringer told MLex.
“The level of interest isn't a surprise, but the speed with which the program has come together certainly exceeded our expectations,” Torringer said.
The pool launched on April 1 with Huawei,
LG Electronics and
Nokia and expanded within four months to 44 licensors holding more than half of the cellular standard-essential patent families within its scope, Sisvel said in a statement announcing the pool’s royalty rates (see
here).
Sisvel last week set per-unit royalties at 1.20 euros for payment sound boxes, 2 euros for low-end devices, 5 euros for mid-range products and 8 euros for high-end devices, the statement said.
The program offers makers of POS equipment a single license to patents essential to cellular standards ranging from 2G through 5G. Sisvel said it has become the largest pool the company has operated when measured by both the number of licensors and patents.
So far, no licensees have been announced.
“We’re now focusing our attention on kicking off licensing discussions with the market,” Torringer said.
Cellular SEP licensing initially centered on smartphones and later expanded to connected vehicles. The POS program could provide another model by tailoring a pool for a particular class of connected products using established cellular standards.
The emergence of patent disputes combined with the maturity of the technology helped Sisvel identify the opportunity, Torringer said.
“Although cellular POS is a mature product category, it was only fairly recently that bilateral SEP licensing activity and legal disputes began to emerge in the space,” he said. “That indicated to us that there was an opportunity for a pool to simplify licensing for all parties involved.”
That does not mean every connected-device category needs a new industry-specific pool. The appropriate approach will vary, Torringer said, and several types of Internet-of-Things devices may already be covered by existing Sisvel programs.
“It really depends on how each device provides connectivity,” he said.
Smart meters and asset trackers often use LTE-M or NB-IoT, low-power technologies derived from the 4G standard, and can be licensed through Sisvel’s Cellular IoT pool, he said. Sisvel also operates a pool for Mioty, a standard developed for large-scale IoT connectivity, and its Wi-Fi Multimode program covers devices that connect using WiFi.
The POS pool’s rapid formation was helped by launching with three major cellular patent owners, Torringer said, giving Sisvel a broad offering for device manufacturers. The company said the newly published rates provide a market benchmark and reflect the breadth of patents available through the program.
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Standard Essential Patents