On September 26, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) released online the “Research Report on Global 5G Standard Essential Patents and Standard Proposals (2024)”. revealing significant developments in the 5G patent landscape. Yan Kun, director of the Research Department of Judicial Appraisal and Patent Standards at the Center for Intellectual Property and Innovation Development of the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology, introduced the report.

The report disclosed 5G standards, market development and the status of 5G standard essential patent activities.  The first standard version of 5G-Advanced has been formally frozen, and 2024 will be the first year of 5G-Advanced commercialization. Main global telecom operators have accelerated the pace of 5G-Advanced commercialization. 5G-Advanced will be expanded in application scenarios and network capabilities in various aspects such as new media, new connectivity, and new capabilities. Globally, 5G infrastructure construction has been scaling up, the proportion of global 5G connections in mobile connections has been increasing, the overall scale of 5G users and terminals has been growing rapidly, and the scale of non-mobile phone terminals and users has been expanding rapidly. China’s construction scale of 5G base stations, 5G connections scale and 5G users scale rank among the top in the world. 5G's empowering effect on various industries increasingly shows up day by day, and industry applications and integration continue to appear.

The report statistically is based on the 5G standard essential declared patents in the ETSI patent database and the 5G proposals in the 3GPP website, carrying out multi-dimensional statistical analysis by means of the 5G standard essential patent declaration situation and the 5G proposal situation to show the global 5G innovation activities. As of March 31, 2024, on 5G standard-essential patent declaration data, there were over 114,000 5G standard-essential patents declared globally, and more than 72,800 valid global patent families; in terms of 5G proposal data, the total number of 5G proposals submitted to the 3GPP by the participating entities were more than 400,000 cases.

From CAICT

September 26th, 2024