Liaison statement
NGMN Recommendations regarding the Transparency of SEP Disclosures

1. About the NGMN Alliance
The NGMN Alliance is an industry organization of leading world-wide Telecom
Opera-tors, Vendors and Research Institutes (see www.ngmn.org) and was founded
by interna-tional network operators in 2006. Its objective is to ensure that
the functionality and per-formance of next generation mobile network
infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of
operators and, ultimately, will satisfy end user demand and expectations. The
NGMN Alliance will drive and guide the development of all future mo-bile
broadband technology enhancements with a focus on 5G. The targets of these
activi-ties are supported by the strong and well-established partnership of
worldwide leading operators, vendors, universities, and successful
co-operations with other industry organ-isations.

2. NGMN 5G Work-Programme, IPR Eco-System for 5G SEP
In February 2015 the NGMN Alliance published its 5G White Paper providing
consoli-dated 5G operator requirements
(https://www.ngmn.org/5g-white-paper.html). With ref-erence to IPR, NGMN is
developing recommendations and an implementation strategy supporting a more
transparent and predictable IPR eco-system for 5G Standards Essen-tial Patents
(SEP) across industries that will support sustainable implementation of 5G
technologies and ensure that innovation is stimulated and innovators
appropriately re-warded. One of the business objectives is to make 5G
accessible for all types of devices from high-end smartphones and tablets down
to low-end MTC (Machine Type Commu-nication) devices such as smoke detectors
and sensors. In support of this objective, the IP licensing terms and
conditions for 5G market should be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory so
as to enable sustainable and successful mass deployment of any 5G service or
Product Type including MTC devices to support the Internet of Things (IoT). One
of the objectives is to improve the transparency of 5G Standard Essential
Patent (SEP) Disclosures.

3. Recommendations

In order to achieve this objective, NGMN is kindly requesting Standards
Developing Or-ganizations working on 5G technologies to consider the
recommendations in the en-closed Annex relating to the disclosure and licensing
of patents and patent applications (collectively, “Patents”) as potentially
essential to a standard. NGMN is continuing to im-prove the recommendations and
may come up with further updates. Any feedback on the recommendations in this
Liaison Statement will be appreciated.

References
None.