Nokia 2015 Annual Report Download - page 36

34 NOKIA IN 2015
Networks business in 2016 continued
Patents and licenses
Intellectual property assets are fundamental
to Nokia, which now controls three distinct
IP portfolios: the Nokia Networks, Alcatel
Lucent and Nokia Technologies portfolios.
The rst two are of particular relevance to
the Networks business. For information on
the Nokia Technologies patent portfolio
please refer to “Business Overview—Nokia
Technologies—Patents and Licenses”.
The Nokia Networks portfolio includes
around 3 700 patent families, comprising
approximately 10 000 individual patents and
patent applications, built on its work as an
industry leader in R&D of wireless, broadband
and transport technologies.
The Alcatel Lucent portfolio includes
around 17 500 patent families, comprising
approximately 47 000 individual patents
and patent applications, built from the wide
ranging R&D activities of Alcatel Lucent,
including Bell Labs, in elds such as wireless,
IP networking, ultra-broadband access and
Cloud technologies, and applications.
Nokia’s IPR portfolios include high-quality
standard-essential patents (“SEPs”) and
patent applications which have been declared
to the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute and other standards
developing organizations as essential to
standards including LTE, WCDMA, GSM
and other standards. In addition, we hold
copyright registrations relating to certain
aspects of our products and services. We
continue to drive new patent generation from
R&D activities across our businesses and seek
to safeguard our investments in technology
through appropriate protection.
We receive and pay patent license royalties
in the ordinary course of business based on
existing agreements with telecommunications
vendors and other third parties. We have
a number of patent license agreements in
place with other major companies and patent
holders, and these provide us with freedom
to operate with limited risk of infringing SEPs
owned by others.
Competition
At present, we consider Cisco, Ericsson,
Huawei and ZTE to be our main competitors
inthe operator infrastructure business.
We also compete with technology-focused
companies such as Adtran (xed access
networks), Ciena (optical network equipment)
and Juniper (routing). Additionally, we
consider Amdocs, IBM, Oracle and other
IT companies as our competitors in the
Applications & Analytics domain.
400Gbps over existing
ber network
Alcatel Lucent, now part of Nokia,
and Vodafone Spain trialed
transporting data at speeds of up
to 400Gbps over 400km between
Madrid and Zaragoza, using
existing optical infrastructure.
The trial used Alcatel Lucent’s
400G technology and showed
thatan existing optical network
cancarry data at up to 17.6Tbps,
doubling thecurrent speed
ofber. It’s the equivalent
oftransmitting the contents of
88Blu-ray discs inasingle second,
while reducing power and space
consumption by half.
“We have a global network
of Technology Centers,
each with individual
technology and
competence specialties.”