IPWatchdog Unleashed: Standards, AI and the Data Transparency Imperative

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we take a look at the importance of data transparency and standards for artificial intelligence (AI) and standard essential patents (SEPs) in the telecommunications sector. Our guest is Tim Pohlmann, who is the Managing Director for the Americas at LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. And before he joined LexisNexis, Tim was the founder and CEO of IPLytics. Tim has worked at the intersection of data and standard essential patents for a long time, and the themes of data integrity, data transparency and how data can be used to influence and inform decision-making were the focus of our conversation.

However, we being our conversation talking about entrepreneurship and leadership from the perspective of a founder and owner of a company that has been acquired, which is a welcome and happy occurrence, but not without challenges. I asked Tim about the inevitable change in priorities a founder faces moving from frontline technologist and creator to a business leader with more responsibilities that can often require focus on matters that draw attention away from those things that caused you to get into the business in the first place.

“Yeah, that very much resonates. I mean, there’s two things to it, of course, being the founder of a startup and building your own team, you’re your own president, it’s your own universe,” Pohlmann explained. “That is a cultural shift I had to learn, being a part of a very large corporation with reporting structures and all the budgeting and numbers crunching. That is different, of course… I was always about, I developed that product, I’m the subject matter expert on the data. Nowadays, I care about budgets and numbers and who should be in that team and who should overlook this one, and that is really different… I mean, we have great talented people, we have more resources now that is also, of course, also different, so we can have more dedicated teams to do things, but of course, I have to let them do it and I can’t be hands-on anymore, and that I do miss a lot.”

As we pivoted the conversation to begin discussing data, standard essential patents and artificial intelligence, we transitioned by discussing how the industry continues to evolve and never stays the same for very long, how there is so much innovation in the industry, and how there are economic and national security implications with China understandably wanting Chinese companies to dominate the technology future and the United States understandably wanting American companies to dominate. This can lead to tensions, and China, the U.S. and Europe all seem to be jockeying to set the technology standards of the future.

“The standard has to be globally the same,” Pohlman said. “If we start having a U.S. 5G and a China 5G, that’d be the end of innovation. And the companies know that. So, I think that’s the big challenge—to overcome this tension by making governments understand. We’re providing something to economy, this is growth, this will make us all richer.”

Talk about the United States and China competing on technology lead us into a conversation about AI and the role standards will play, which was front of mind probably because we recorded this conversation right as news of DeepSeek, China’s allegedly new super-advanced AI, was breaking. My question to Tim was: “If you want to really have AI that affects people’s lives and makes innovation faster, better, cheaper, safer, people are going to have to be playing by the same rules, to some extent, I would think. What do you think?”

“It’s a super interesting topic to get into. I think it’s super dynamic,” Pohlmann said. “I think standardization is always great… people agreeing to one standard enables innovation on top. And I think that is an area for AI still to identify, we don’t want to regulate. We don’t want to put frame to it. I think there’s a lot of standards that make sense to me with regards to what kind of data you should or could use. How can we somehow define certain standards of what information in those AI tools and what they spit out is true or not. I mean, today, you can ask three AI tools a question, and they may come up with different answers, but there may be still one truth.”

As we pivoted away from AI and into more traditional standard essential patents, particularly focusing on telecommunications (i.e., 5G and 6G), I acknowledge that while there will be need for AI standardization, and there will be a lot of unique questions arise in that context, we still don’t have a lot of answers in a number of critical areas for well-known and well-established technologies. This paved the way for us to discuss FRAND and to tackle the question about whether a FRAND rate really exists in the first place.

“I think one problem I see with people, what they often want is a very clear and definite answer,” Pohlmann explained. “And that’s true for SEP licensing, where some people ask me, what is FRAND? What is that rate? What is the number? And people don’t like thinking about this as ranges, even though that’s the answer, but people don’t like that. I mean, that creates, again, uncertainty.”

“If people ask me really what FRAND is, I keep saying it’s two parties closing a deal. That’s how simple it is,” Pohlmann continued. “I mean, if two parties agree on a price, then that’s fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory because those parties have negotiated and it came to a conclusion. And I think that is also the problem. Again, the world has changed faster than our minds and our systems. Suddenly industries that never heard about SEPs are in the middle of a SEP negotiation. It’s a cultural new thing to do for them. They were not used to it.”

Our conversation goes on to discuss implementers understandably wanting to pay only to license patents that cover technologies that are actually included in the adopted standard, the potential that the Federal Circuit will rule that lump sum license payments are not relevant to determining a fair and reasonable licensing rate, what considerations go into converging on a rate that is FRAND, bulk discounting, and the role data plays in lifting the curtain so implementers who are themselves competitors with other implementers can determine whether they are getting a rate that will make them uncompetitive, and much more.

So, without further ado, we invite you to listen to full conversation. You can listen to our full discussion wherever you get your podcasts (links here) or you can visit IPWatchdog Unleashed on IPWatchdog.com. You can also watch the video below, on the  IPWatchdog YouTube channel.

More IPWatchdog Unleashed

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