There's intellectual property in every piece of technology. It's just a fact of business life. So Intermec Technologies Corp., which has a broad portfolio of passive radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, recently decided to give its licensees a break by launching the RFID Rapid Start Licensing Program.
The program, which kicked off in June and continues through to the end of August, is geared toward simplifying and reducing the fee for licensing its RFID IP. It gives companies access to its 145 patents -- many of which apply to EPCGlobal's Gen2 spec -- in the hopes of enabling them to get product to market faster and cost effectively. It also offers amnesty for any past infringement.
Intermec, which has been at the center of an IP dispute with Symbol Technologies, and to a lesser extent with EPCGlobal over the royalty-free Gen2 spec, is trying to make a chivalrous gesture with this program.
"We said, 'let's make it real simple and eliminate the barriers to entry for potential participants by moving the conversation off IP,'" says Chris Kelley, Intermec's director of RFID business development. "We've compressed this down to a 90-day period so that everyone can get in, sign up and all start off at the gate on an even playing field."
According to Kelley, the standard royalty rate for an ASIC chipmaker, for example, is 5%. This program reduces that to 2%. The difference could mean hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars, he says. This is a limited time offer, however, and after the August 31 deadline, Intermec will offer licenses only on individual patents on a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) basis.
The program, Intermec officials say, is not a marketing scheme or a "fire sale," so to speak. Rather, it's an olive branch. "If you talk to a CEO in the manufacturing space, they will say they recognize the need to license technology from Intermec. This program makes it easy from a financial point of view and gives them amnesty for any infringement in the past," Kelley says.