Cellular connectivity has become a cornerstone of the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling billions of devices across industries to communicate seamlessly. As the market scales, so too does the importance of licensing standard essential patents (SEPs) covering Cellular IoT standards. Yet, unlike smartphones, where SEP licensing frameworks are well established, licensing practices for IoT remain fragmented, complex, and still in their infancy.
Our new report, Who is Leading the Cellular IoT Patent Race?, sheds light on this evolving space by identifying the major SEP owners across NB-IoT (low-power sensors/meters), LTE-M (low-power wide-area connectivity), LTE-Cat 1 (cellular standard for higher data like payment terminals), and V2X (vehicle-to-vehicle/infrastructure), and by analyzing how portfolio quality reshapes the competitive landscape. The study also highlights the growing role of patent licensing programs and identifies increasing patent acquisition activity by patent assertion entities (PAEs), which underscores the importance of transparency and reliable data, especially as licensing frameworks are still emerging.
IoT applications span a broad spectrum: from smart metering in utilities to asset tracking in logistics, livestock monitoring in agriculture, smart city infrastructure, industrial automation, fleet management, consumer wearables, and environmental monitoring. Each of these verticals integrates connectivity standards differently, depending on performance requirements, regulatory frameworks, and end-user value.
This diversity makes a single, uniform approach to SEP licensing impractical. While the smartphone ecosystem converged on relatively predictable royalty frameworks, IoT adoption presents unique difficulties. The value contributed by cellular standards differs dramatically between, for example, a connected watch and a smart electricity meter. Without clear valuation metrics and clear royalty benchmarks, negotiations under Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms remain uncertain.
The lack of transparency in declared patent data compounds the challenge. Standards developed by 3GPP, including NB-IoT, LTE-M, LTE-Cat 1, and V2X, meet different technical requirements. However, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) declaration database typically links patents only to broad technical specifications. Mapping a declared SEP to a specific IoT feature requires additional analysis, which is not available in the public domain. This data gap hinders both licensors and licensees in assessing market shares and negotiating royalties.
Patent pools such as Sisvel’s IoT pool and Avanci’s smart meter and EV charging programs offer some structure, but cover only a subset of the SEP landscape. Many leading patent holders continue to negotiate bilaterally, while others combine pool participation with selective direct licensing.
Cellular IoT use cases and relevant products
Each of these verticals comes with its own technology stack, market structure, and end-user value proposition, which further complicates negotiations for standards implementers. As IoT adoption grows and connectivity becomes ubiquitous across industries, the need for scalable, fair, and sector-specific SEP licensing models will only become more pressing.
To identify patents relevant to Cellular IoT standards, we began with worldwide patents declared to ETSI under the 4G and 5G technical specifications. LexisNexis® Classification™, a software solution featuring an AI-powered algorithm trained on datasets of verified positives (confirmed Cellular IoT SEPs) and negatives (patents unrelated to IoT standards), was then applied to detect patents related to NB-IoT, LTE-M, LTE-Cat 1, and V2X. Random samples from the resulting landscape were reviewed by subject matter experts to validate relevance and flag misclassifications, and draft landscapes were shared with key SEP owners for feedback. This review and validation process was carried out in several iterations, with findings continuously fed back into the model to improve accuracy. The final output is a patent landscape that has been reviewed and validated by both experts and industry stakeholders to ensure reliability and coverage.
It is important to note that this landscape includes both SEPs and non-SEPs, reflecting the limitations of ETSI’s self-declaration system, which does not assess essentiality. To address this, LexisNexis launched the Cellular Verified campaign. In this initiative, ETSI declarations were cleaned and deduplicated, then reviewed by more than 35 major ETSI-declaring companies to reconcile them with their internal declaration records. This process aligned ETSI data with company-maintained records for 3G, 4G, and 5G, providing a consistent and validated foundation for reliable SEP analytics.
This approach reveals that around 17% of all ETSI-declared 4G and 5G patent families are directly relevant to Cellular IoT. This is a significant portion of the broader landscape, confirming that IoT is not just a niche subset of connectivity, but a core area of innovation and standardization.Looking more closely at the distribution of declared patents across the different Cellular IoT standards, LTE-M and NB-IoT show a relatively balanced pattern, with a considerable number of patent families overlapping between 4G and 5G. By contrast, LTE-Cat 1 patents are concentrated mainly in 4G, reflecting their earlier role in enabling higher-bandwidth IoT applications, while the bulk of V2X patents are declared under 5G, underlining its position as a forward-looking technology designed for automotive and mobility use cases.
Accuracy is critical in these assessments. To that end, LexisNexis launched the Cellular Verified program, working with more than 30 ETSI-declaring companies to validate declaration records against their internal logs. The initiative addressed errors, duplicates, and inconsistencies in the raw ETSI database. As a result, declaration data is now better aligned with company-maintained records, ensuring reliability for licensing, litigation, and policy analysis.
Analysis of publication years shows steady growth in Cellular IoT-related filings since 2010. NB-IoT, LTE-M, and LTE-Cat 1 activity began in the early part of the decade, while V2X emerged later, with filings accelerating from 2018 onwards. Recent years reveal a consistent upward trend across all standards, though LTE-Cat 1 activity appears to be levelling off.
This filing trajectory mirrors industry adoption: LTE-Cat 1, suited for higher-bandwidth devices like payment terminals, has matured earlier, while V2X, a core enabler of connected and autonomous vehicles, remains on a sharp upward curve. The persistence of growth underlines that Cellular IoT is not a passing trend, but a long-term driver of connectivity innovation.
Leadership in this field depends on the metric applied. Patent family counts reveal one set of frontrunners, while quality-adjusted rankings can reorder the landscape significantly. Huawei and Qualcomm hold leading positions in NB-IoT and LTE-M, while LG Electronics and Huawei lead in Cat 1 and V2X.
Excerpt from the top 30 Cellular IoT patent owners, ranked according to their patent portfolio size, counting the total number of patent families
Excerpt from the top 30 Cellular IoT patent owners ranked according to their patent portfolio Patent Asset Index in the different Cellular IoT standards
This divergence between quantity and quality matters. Patent holders focused on R&D or licensing, such as InterDigital, or certain patent monetization entities, can exert significant influence with fewer but high-impact SEPs. Conversely, some companies with large counts may have portfolios weighted towards incremental improvements with limited practical use.
Get unique insights into Cellular IoT rankings:
The ranking also indicates which of the top SEP owners license their patents through the Sisvel IoT program, the Avanci EV charging program, or the Avanci smart meter program. Overall, the Cellular IoT programs have gained strong traction, in some cases covering up to 50% of the identified Cellular IoT patent families. While some companies participate in all programs, others are more selective, and a third group has yet to join any licensing program.
Patent assertion entities (PAEs) are increasingly active in acquiring and asserting SEPs in the IoT space. Examples include portfolios acquired from major telecoms companies and repurposed for monetization. Their growing presence adds complexity for implementers, as PAEs are often more litigious than operating companies.
In the United States, SEP litigation has more than doubled over the past decade, with PAEs emerging as the primary driver. For IoT implementers, this means rising exposure to disputes as connectivity standards expand into new verticals.
Cellular IoT is poised to become a cornerstone of digital transformation. From smart cities and connected vehicles to industrial automation and energy management, its impact will be wide-ranging. But the SEP licensing landscape is yet fragmented, unpredictable, and fraught with legal risk.
Three themes will define the road ahead:
For IP professionals, understanding both the Cellular IoT numerator (patents held) and Cellular IoT denominator (total patents related to a standard) will be critical to assessing portfolio value and negotiation leverage. Reliable data and quality metrics are no longer optional; they are prerequisites for informed strategy.
As seen in the 5G patent race, leadership in Cellular IoT will be determined not simply by who holds the most patents, but by who can translate quality portfolios into effective licensing and enforcement strategies.
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