Ericsson expects to hold 25 percent of all essential patents for LTE, making it the largest patent holder in the industry, according to company website. 

However research group Informa put Ericsson alongwith Nokia, and LG Electronics with 7% of total LTE patents each. They all are tied for fourth place in the list published by Informa.

Ericsson chief intellectual property officer Kasim Alfalahi told connectedplanet that any conclusion that has Ericsson at the back of the pack in essential patents is clearly wrong.

“From our perspective, at this time the only valid way to make a judgment is to see what companies have contributed to the standards and which technologies have been adopted,” Alfalahi said.

Informa says that Qualcomm and its GSM technology counterpart InterDigital together control 40% of the LTE patent pool, with 19% and 21% of total patents, respectively. 

Further Huawei accounted for 9% of all patents, coming in third. Samsung had 8%. 

Huawei claims to holds 181 LTE essential patents, accounting for 34% of the infrastructure vendors in LTE essential patents.

Informa warned that its percentages reflected only the number of overall patents, not the overall value. Only a third of all LTE patents would be considered "essential".

On LTE patents contributed by Huawei, Informa says that 178 are registered in China and only a handful of these could currently be described as essential.

It appears that some of patents held by these companies may be more effective locally unless validated other recognized trademark and patent offices.