For the fifth year in a row, the Global Standards Leadership Conference brought together top thought leaders to tackle the biggest issues in Standard Essential Patents, FRAND licensing, high-stakes litigation, standards development, and policy. After successful events at Northwestern University (Chicago, 2022), UC San Diego (2023), UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (2024), and the University of Boston (2025), we’re thrilled to announce that the 2026 conference will be held in San Diego.
This year, C-level executives and industry experts explored the future of SEP licensing, FRAND determination, litigation trends, and cross-jurisdiction policy debates. Attendees gained unique insights into how AI and next-generation standards in cellular, wireless, video, audio, and memory technologies are shaping the next wave of innovation.
Tim Pohlmann, Managing Director Americas, LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions, delivered the opening keynote and reflected on the conference’s mission to bring together experts from business, law, policy, technology, and academia to discuss the most pressing challenges facing the standards and SEP ecosystem.
Based on attendee feedback, three key topics emerged as priorities:
His keynote focused on the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) in determining SEP essentiality. Tim noted that recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have significantly improved the ability to map patents to standards and identify potentially essential patents. While he was skeptical about LLM performance only a year ago, he now believes the latest LLM models have reached a level where they can generate meaningful and highly valuable results. At the same time, however, he believes that LLMs should augment, not replace, human expertise. LexisNexis® IPlytics™ combines foundational LLMs with subject-matter experts, customer feedback, and continuous validation to improve accuracy and reliability.
A major focus of his presentation was the importance of understanding AI’s limitations. He argued that the biggest risk is not random errors, but a systematic bias. Even highly accurate models can produce distorted outcomes if errors disproportionately affect certain patent portfolios, technologies, jurisdictions, or patent drafting styles. In his talk, he illustrated how a seemingly low false-positive rate can dramatically inflate the perceived strength of some SEP portfolios while having only a minor impact on others.
Key takeaways from the keynote included:
Looking ahead, Tim suggested that the next major challenge is not simply identifying essential patents but understanding their relative value. As AI continues to mature, the industry will increasingly focus on linking essentiality with implementation, usage, and economic significance.
Tim’s overall message was optimistic: AI is transforming SEP analysis and creating new opportunities for transparency and efficiency, but successful adoption will require a combination of technology, expert judgment, and continuous scrutiny of results.
Learn more about LLM-based essentiality analysis and talk to an expert.
Kirti Gupta presented findings from Cornerstone Research’s report on global patent litigation trends, highlighting how intellectual property has become increasingly important as company value shifts from tangible to intangible assets. She noted that innovation and patenting activity continue to grow globally, with China now surpassing the U.S. in patent filings and playing an increasingly important role in the global IP ecosystem.
A key theme of the presentation was the globalization of patent disputes. While the U.S. remains an important arena, patent enforcement has increasingly shifted to other authorities. Europe, particularly through the Unified Patent Court (UPC), has become a major forum for pan-European enforcement, while China has emerged as a significant venue for SEP litigation. At the same time, countries such as India, Brazil, and Colombia are seeing growing patent litigation activity.
Key takeaways from the session:
Overall, Kirti’s message was that IP enforcement strategies must increasingly be viewed through a global lens. The center of gravity for patent litigation is becoming more international, while new technologies such as AI are creating entirely new categories of intellectual property disputes that will shape the next decade.
Panelists:
This panel brought together legal and economic perspectives to assess how FRAND frameworks are evolving across jurisdictions and whether recent court decisions are moving the industry closer to achieving the original goals of FRAND. The discussion focused on recent developments in Europe and the U.S., particularly the growing number of courts determining global FRAND terms and the increasing role of arbitration in resolving disputes.
A recurring theme was that, while courts have become more sophisticated in applying FRAND methodologies, significant disagreement persists over how FRAND rates should be determined. Much of the debate centered on the use of comparable licenses, the role of top-down analyses, and whether courts can reliably adjust for “non-FRAND factors” such as bargaining power, litigation pressure, or unique commercial circumstances. The panelists generally agreed that no single methodology is perfect and that different courts can reach different outcomes while applying similar principles.
Overall, the panel concluded that while substantial progress has been made in FRAND adjudication, important questions remain unresolved. Different courts continue to reach different outcomes, and the growing shift toward arbitration raises new questions about transparency and predictability. The discussion highlighted that the next stage of FRAND development may be less about defining FRAND itself and more about building institutions and processes that can deliver consistent and credible outcomes globally.
Watch the recording of this discussion below:
This panel explored the rapid rise of licensing and litigation activity in the streaming ecosystem: “Streaming Wars”. While streaming-related licensing discussions have been ongoing for many years, the panel agreed that recent litigation reflects a market that has matured to the point where longstanding negotiations are now reaching courts and other dispute-resolution forums. At the same time, the continued growth of streaming, the increasing importance of video codecs, and the emergence of new licensing models have accelerated industry attention on these issues.
The discussion sparked differing views on whether litigation and the threat of preliminary injunctions place undue pressure on implementers to accept licensing terms, or whether such measures are simply a necessary consequence after years of unsuccessful negotiations. Panelists also debated the value of the latest video codec generations, with some arguing that many quality improvements are no longer perceptible to consumers and that compression efficiency gains are becoming less significant as device processing power and network bandwidth continue to improve.
A central theme was how value should be allocated within the streaming ecosystem. Unlike the smartphone market, where licensing has traditionally focused on end-user devices, streaming introduces multiple layers of value creation, including encoding, decoding, content delivery infrastructure, and the content itself. The panel explored whether licensing should occur at the device, subscriber, user, or other levels within the value chain. While there was broad agreement that value allocation is the core issue, no clear consensus emerged on the most appropriate licensing model.
Overall, the panel highlighted both the similarities and differences between the streaming and smartphone licensing ecosystems. While many of the same debates around valuation, licensing efficiency, and litigation leverage remain, the streaming market introduces new questions around content, infrastructure, and codec-specific value. Patent pools have therefore adapted more flexible models in which royalty rates can be determined by usage or by subscription revenue. The discussion concluded that the industry is still in the early stages of answering these questions and that future economic analysis and court decisions will play an important role in shaping the market.
Speakers:
This fireside chat explored one of the newest and potentially most significant developments in the standards ecosystem: the emergence of AI infrastructure standards and the resulting SEP licensing opportunities. Willy Chang, the recently appointed “Head of AI Pools” at the patent pool Sisvel, argued that while much of the public attention around AI focuses on large language models and applications, the real technological foundation of AI lies in the underlying data-center infrastructure, including semiconductors, memory, networking, optics, storage, and foundry technologies.
A central theme of the discussion was that the AI infrastructure market has undergone a major shift over the past two years. Historically, companies deploying AI workloads were largely dependent on proprietary ecosystems. NVIDIA was a prominent example. However, hyperscalers and other major technology companies increasingly pushed for open standards to avoid vendor lock-in, leading to the rapid formation of new standards bodies and the development of technologies such as UALink, Ultra Ethernet, CXL, and other interconnect, memory, and networking standards. As a result, an entirely new standards-based ecosystem is emerging around AI infrastructure.
Overall, the discussion highlighted that the industry is at an inflection point. Unlike cellular standards, which evolved over decades, AI infrastructure standards are developing at an extraordinary speed. Willy emphasized that this creates a unique opportunity for licensors, implementers, and standards organizations to build a licensing ecosystem that is more efficient and coordinated from the outset, potentially avoiding some of the fragmentation and complexity that emerged in previous generations of SEP licensing. Patent pools will play a major role in managing SEP-related challenges, reducing risk and market friction.
This panel explored how the rapid growth of AI infrastructure is reshaping the DRAM and memory ecosystem and creating new opportunities and challenges for SEP licensing. While DRAM standards have existed and been licensed for decades, panelists agreed that the AI boom, particularly demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), has fundamentally changed the economics of the market and brought renewed attention to licensing and litigation.
A key theme was that DRAM licensing differs from more mature SEP ecosystems such as cellular, wireless and video codecs. Historically, much of the DRAM market operated through competitor-to-competitor licensing and relatively limited litigation. Today, however, soaring demand for AI infrastructure, memory bottlenecks, and increasing market concentration are creating new incentives for licensing activity and enforcement. Several speakers suggested that DRAM may be entering a phase similar to what the wireless industry experienced many years ago.
Overall, the panel concluded that AI infrastructure is creating a new licensing frontier. While lessons from wireless, multimedia, and earlier DRAM licensing programs remain relevant, the combination of hyperscalers, data-center architectures, memory bottlenecks, and emerging standards creates a unique environment that may require new licensing models and valuation approaches in the years ahead.
This panel explored how 6G is evolving beyond traditional mobile broadband and becoming a platform for AI-native connectivity, satellite integration, sensing, and edge computing. While previous generations of wireless technology focused primarily on faster downloads and improved mobile communications, the panelists described 6G as a much broader transformation that will connect AI-enabled devices, satellites, industrial systems, vehicles, robotics, and future edge-computing applications.
A major theme was the growing convergence between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks. Satellite operators are now actively participating in 3GPP standardization, and panelists highlighted that satellite connectivity is no longer a future concept but is already being deployed through existing 5G ecosystems. The long-term vision is seamless global connectivity across cellular and satellite networks, enabling everything from asset tracking and logistics to connected vehicles and critical infrastructure monitoring.
Overall, the panel concluded that 6G represents more than just another generation of wireless technology. It is shaping up to be a platform for AI-enabled connectivity, distributed intelligence, and ubiquitous communications across terrestrial and satellite networks. While many technical, economic, and licensing questions remain unresolved, the panel agreed that the convergence of AI, satellites, and advanced connectivity will fundamentally reshape both the telecom ecosystem and the industries that depend on it.
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