patent pool

English

Noun

patent pool (plural patent pools)

1. (law) A consortium of companies which agree to crosslicense patents relating to a particular technology, often to avoid the problem of blocking patents.
   • 2001, Rudi Bekkers, Mobile Telecommunications Standards: GSM, UMTS, TETRA, and ERMES, Artech House, →ISBN, page 250:

     A patent pool is an arrangement in which patents of different firms that are relevant to a certain standard or technology are licensed as a package, and the resulting royalties are distributed among those firms (called the licensors).

   • 2002, Mark A. Glick, Lara A. Reymann, Richard Hoffman, Intellectual Property Damages, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 213:

     A patent pool can be an effective way of resolving conflicting rights.

Further reading

• patent pool on Wikipedia.Wikipedia