ZTE has announced that it is now one of the leading vendors in the world of essential patent (EP) for LTE standards, securing 235 of these patents. 

ZTE says that it has a 7% share of the total LTE essential patentsdeclared on the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) online database of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as of 30th November 2010.

According to company statement, this share of LTE essential patents is a result of ZTE’s continuous R&D investment in the LTE-related key technologies since 2004. As of the end of 2010, ZTE had submitted more than 6800 proposals to 3GPP, of which more than 3900 proposals involved LTE/SAE technologies, and had made more than 2900 LTE-related patent applications.

 ZTE aims to increase its current share of LTE essential patents from 7% to 10% by 2012, according to Mr. Hu Jian, Vice President of ZTE. The company will also commit more R&D resources to accumulate essential patents and adopt a pro-active approach in improving 4G and incubating 4G+ standards.

“With LTE essential patents being evenly distributed among different vendors, we believe that it will be helpful to provide a comparatively healthy and balanced IPR licensing environment for the development of the 4G industry,” said Mr. Hu.

He also emphasized that ZTE had been committed to following the FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) principle for any company wanting to achieve a patent license from ZTE Corporation. As the migration of 3GPP standards, there is no doubt that ZTE will contribute more essential solutions to LTE and its evolved standards.