Accelerating Foundational Research Through AI

Oct 2025/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

AI is reshaping the frontiers of science and technology, opening up new opportunities across InterDigital’s research areas in wireless and video, to change the way we connect. At InterDigital, AI is a driving force behind our foundational research, enabling us to reimagine the future of connectivity, communication, and immersive media.

Our wireless team is already pioneering an AI-native 6G where machine learning and intelligent systems are built into the network fabric itself. Our Video and AI Labs have long integrated AI into core innovations from next-generation video coding and feature coding for machines, to energy-aware media. Yet, as AI reshapes research itself, we’re adding depth to our research teams and strengthening our long-term commitment to foundational research.

To realize this vision, we’re thrilled to announce that InterDigital has acquired Deep Render, a trailblazing video compression innovator with AI at its core. Deep Render’s approach, built on complexity-constrained learning-based models and first-principles thinking, directly aligns with our mission to drive AI-native innovation from the ground up.

Through this acquisition, we’re taking a decisive step toward full-stack, AI-native compression, where algorithms evolve and adapt through learning rather than fixed design, with a complexity compatible with the capabilities of today’s devices.

A New Era in AI-Driven Research and Innovation

The Deep Render team brings more than new models; it brings a research mindset grounded in deep tech, compression theory, and machine learning. We believe this acquisition gives us a competitive edge in creating next-generation video systems for streaming, augmented and virtual reality, spatial video, real-time communications, and more.

As global video traffic continues to dominate networks, accounting for nearly 80% of Internet data, traditional network infrastructure alone cannot sustain this growing demand. InterDigital’s leadership in today’s most advanced standardized codecs, HEVC and VVC, has already driven massive efficiency gains, and now, with our combination with Deep Render’s AI-native approach, we can re-imagine the future of compression.

This acquisition strengthens InterDigital’s strategic advantage in three transformative ways:
<ol style="list-style-type: decimal;margin-left:40px;">
<li>

Unifying AI and Video Expertise
By combining Deep Render's AI-driven techniques with our deep expertise in traditional codecs, market-driven features, rate-distortion optimization, and our proven experience in building and enabling deployment of large-scale video compression technologies, we are paving the way for a new generation of adaptive, context-aware, and self-optimizing video systems. These systems will continuously learn from the content they process and the environments they operate in, while leveraging robust and scalable foundations.
</li>
<li>
Accelerated AI-Centric Innovation
Deep Render's methods infuse our Video Lab's research pipeline with fresh AI capabilities. We'll explore hybrid and fully AI-native codecs sooner, harnessing our know-how and experience in the standards ecosystem to drive broad deployment of Deep Render's innovation. This positions us to shape not only future standards but the entire evolution of visual experiences across devices and platforms.
</li>
<li>
Deepening World-class IP
Deep Render's pioneering patent portfolio in AI-based compression complements our world-class patent portfolio, with our assets in HEVC and VVC routinely recognized as some of the highest quality. As we integrate those assets, this strengthens InterDigital's future research, partnerships and licensing, and establishes us as a global leader in AI-native video technology research.
</li>
</ol>

A Stronger InterDigital; A Future of Intelligent Media and Networks

In the coming months, we’ll integrate Deep Render’s researchers and engineers into InterDigital’s Video Lab. We will further enhance our AI-native solutions and integrate AI modules into traditional codecs, with an initial focus on meeting future standards.

This will complement our existing compression research and will open up new opportunities in complementary research areas such as energy-aware media.

Our goal is to accelerate AI-native video research and to make it a pillar of the standards ecosystem. In the long-term, we believe this will open up new business opportunities as creation, delivery, and consumption of video spreads across a growing range of devices and services.

Deep Render’s pioneering spirit and research excellence perfectly complement InterDigital’s legacy in wireless, video and AI standards. The acquisition strengthens some of the hallmarks of InterDigital’s world-class research teams, including our agility, creativity, and scientific rigor.

Together, we will push the boundaries of what’s possible, creating intelligent, adaptive, and sustainable systems where bandwidth constraints fade, quality and experience thrive, and AI drives the next great leap in human connection.

We look forward to sharing updates on our progress and new breakthroughs in the months ahead.

Setting the Standard for Partnerships in Research

Oct 2025/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

Through our research in wireless, video, and AI, InterDigital leads not only in the development of key standardized technologies but also plays a central role in the kinds of industry partnerships that are the hallmark of standards like 5G and Wi-Fi.

InterDigital develops standardized technologies that help consumers connect with loved ones and colleagues wherever they are, and that lower barriers to entry for new market entrants. This development process isn’t done easily but is built through a spirit of both competition and collaboration amongst industry participants. As we develop next-generation technological standards, companies provide their own solutions to specific technical problems, and then the industry as a whole collaborates to select the best technological advances for each version of a new standard.

Engineers from the leading contributing companies like InterDigital, are elected by their peers to take on key leadership roles in standards development organizations (SDOs) such as 3GPP, ETSI and ATIS in cellular wireless, IEEE in Wi-Fi, and DVB and MPEG in video.

This year, World Standards Day focuses on the UN’s sustainable development goal which celebrates the power of partnerships to help bring long-term sustainable solutions to some of the world’s most daunting challenges. It gives us an opportunity to recognize not only the power of standards that deliver more advanced devices and services, but also to reflect on how the ethos of partnership, inherent in standards development, is something we should protect and promote.

At InterDigital, we invest significant resources into our contributions to SDOs and the leadership roles we take on at standards groups and research bodies. Overall, we own thousands of patents that we believe are essential or might become essential to a standard, and we hold more than 100 leadership positions in wireless and video standards bodies.

We also foster close ties with universities and other research institutions around the world, where we engage in early-stage research, much of which is carried out before the standardization process for a specific technology begins. This pre-standards work, which takes place many years ahead of commercialization, is a hallmark of InterDigital’s research.

One partnership-based project that we launched in 2022 is our Nemo.AI Common Lab, which we established in partnership with Inria, France’s premier public research institute for digital science. This partnership focuses on exploring and fostering innovative applications of AI, many of which may eventually become components of their relevant global standards.

The lab — named for the adventurous Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea — is built upon harmonized research priorities on immersive media, AI for digital experiences, and energy-efficient technologies.

It also helps that both InterDigital and Inria operate research facilities in Rennes in Northwestern France, making collaboration even easier through frequent in-person collaboration and shared access to infrastructure.

One project that Nemo.AI launched earlier this year is known as Nisk.ai and is focused on the use of AI to develop energy-efficient video coding. The increase of video traffic on today’s networks reflects how video enables closer connections and more immersive experiences, but also brings a growing energy footprint across connected devices. By using AI-driven approaches to video compression, the Nisk.ai team focuses on delivering video content of equivalent visual quality as other high-quality coding tools, but at lower bitrates, thereby reducing bandwidth requirements and energy consumption.

As our work in Nemo.AI demonstrates, partnerships can be particularly valuable in early-stage research before the formal process of standardization has begun. Working collaboratively allows us to pool expertise and resources to perfect technical advances that can ultimately be contributed to a standard.

But it’s not just in pre-standards work where we make an impact. For example, our video engineers led a drive to ensure that energy consumption is taken into account in the development of new, standardized video technologies.

We appreciate the power of partnership in every area of our research, and we recognize that the benefits can be exponential when the technologies that result from these partnerships are incorporated into standards. That’s because, as new standards are implemented into new products and services, consumers benefit from seamless interoperability, and device manufacturers get lower barriers to entry, which in turn helps fuel widespread global adoption.

It's not just in research where we see the power of partnership in standards. At their core, standards are about a partnership between innovators who drive the development of new technologies and those companies that implement these technologies in their devices and services.

Our years of working closely with the likes of Inria in areas such as advanced AI techniques for video coding mean that we have carried out the research so that implementers can focus on what they do best in bringing new products to market.

It’s this kind of collaboration that drives how we connect and showcases how standards shape innovation.

Celebrating creativity on World IP Day, whoever is the artist

Apr 2025/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

Whether you’re a painter, a musician, a scriptwriter, a chemist, or an electrical engineer, creativity and intellectual property rights go hand-in-hand.

The form of intellectual property may differ, but the guiding principle remains the same; those who create or invent should be able to enjoy exclusive rights to their invention and profit from their discovery.

For World IP Day 2025, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has thrown the spotlight on IP and music. As WIPO says, “music is a universal form of creative expression and IP rights play a pivotal role in supporting a vibrant and diverse landscape.” Without enjoying the rights to their music through IP protection, a budding musician may not have the means to continue to do what they love in creating and expressing themselves.

Forms of expression and distribution may have changed radically since the early days of the printing press and 45 rpm records, but it has become widely accepted that creators in the arts are entitled to protect their works through copyright. And, thanks to this protection, every time a musician’s latest track is played on your local radio station or streamed through the likes of Spotify, the artist receives a small royalty which they can use to produce a new album or launch a tour. The same is true for movie studios and streaming platforms, which use copyright to protect their shows and to profit from their content for years to come.

Some people may be familiar with the importance of IP through copyright, which covers a favorite album or movie, or through a trademarked brand, which helps a business connect with consumers. However, fewer people are familiar with the same role that patents play in areas like wireless and video connectivity. I would argue that of all the forms of intellectual property that creators benefit from today, patents are perhaps the least well understood and, unfortunately, are often the most commonly derided. They shouldn’t be.

As with a copyrighted piece of music from Bob Dylan or Taylor Swift, patent holders own the rights to their discovery for a fixed period of time. In return for these rights, they agree to publicly disclose their invention so that others can learn from it, build on it, and potentially implement it in a new product.

Inventors of foundational technology license their patent-protected inventions so that it can be implemented by a device manufacturer or service provider, and in return the inventor receives a relatively small royalty, much like a musician does when their song is played. In this way, the implementer does not have to bear the cost of foundational R&D, and everybody wins. Implementers benefit from new innovation in their product, consumers benefit from more advanced technologies, and the inventors benefit so that they can continue to invest in future work.

This kind of innovation cycle already benefits the music industry where the development of technologies in areas like cellular wireless, Wi-Fi, and video compression mean that consumers can listen to their favorite tracks or watch their favorite music videos anytime, anywhere. Because of the investments in research by innovators like InterDigital, the likes of Spotify, YouTube, and other streaming platforms don’t have to invent their own proprietary form of wireless connectivity to ensure that users can connect to a platform. Instead, they benefit from the open, collaborative innovation system, which produces standardized technologies such as 5G.

This virtuous cycle of innovation is at the core of what we do at InterDigital. Without IP protecting our foundational research in wireless, video, and AI, we would not be able to continue investing in our engineering teams. Our research in areas like 5G is complex, is backed by decades of experience in various highly technical fields, and is often not implemented in a product for five to ten years.

Thanks to patent protection, we can license our innovation and continue to invest in our research. This is just one reason why IP remains crucial to the economy, because whether you are looking to define a new era or build a new generation, IP rights are at the core of creativity.

How technology standards power new entrants and market opportunities

Oct 2024/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

Open and collaborative technology standards such as 5G, Wi-Fi and advanced video compression, which are underpinned by related standard essential patents (SEPs), are the cornerstone of today’s connected world. These standards bring significant benefits but, above all, they provide new market entrants with access to ready-made technologies that open up new market opportunities and decrease the barriers to entry in hypercompetitive markets, which benefits billions of consumers worldwide.
One of the defining trends of the smartphone market over the last 15 years has been the emergence of a group of Chinese device manufacturers who now dominate smartphone manufacturing, holding seven out of the top ten positions, globally.
Where once the top ten was populated by manufacturers from the U.S. and Europe, it is now China that leads the way with many of the country’s OEMs dominating the top ten alongside Apple and Samsung.
I would argue that the success of Honor, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and, more recently, Transsion, is not simply down to their ability to bring great handsets to market but also because of the very clear benefits they derive from standardized technologies.
Take Xiaomi for example, which has emerged over the last decade as one of the top-three global smartphone players and the manufacturer of a growing range of connected devices.
Fortunately for Xiaomi it has not had to invest hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in R&D to develop its own version of Wi-Fi or 4G and 5G before it could bring a handset to market. Xiaomi combines cutting-edge product design with savvy marketing and competitive pricing to challenge the likes of Apple and Samsung.
Thanks to the decades of research that have gone into each generation of cellular wireless and because of the open, global standards system, 4G and 5G technology is readily available for a manufacturer like Xiaomi. This means that Xiaomi, and future new entrants like it, can focus on what they do best – offering consumers the latest cellular technology at attractive prices.
Through its journey into the smartphone big leagues, Xiaomi has trod a familiar path. Almost all of today’s major players have emerged relatively rapidly over the last 20 years and have taken market share from incumbents like Nokia, Sony, Ericsson, and Blackberry. We have also seen the likes of Huawei and ZTE emerge as some of the leading contributors to standards, becoming significant owners of SEPs in areas like 5G.
Without global standards, developed by engineers at companies like InterDigital, these rapid market changes would not have been possible. This is particularly worth noting given that this week we celebrate World Standards Day.
It’s not just in the smartphone space where companies like Xiaomi benefit from standards. In consumer electronics, where Xiaomi is a top TV vendor, it also benefits from standards such as Wi-Fi and advanced video compression like the HEVC standard. In automotive, where Xiaomi made a splash earlier this year with its first electric vehicle, it can also benefit from cellular technologies as cars become more and more like “smartphones on wheels.”
So, as Xiaomi’s experiences demonstrate, standards not only power new market entrants, they also enable incumbents in sectors such as smartphones, to develop new connected devices in other verticals that use the same standardized technologies.
While much attention is focused on cellular and the latest 5G standard, video technologies are only becoming more important as we continue to consume a growing amount of video and we see the proliferation of streaming services. Without advanced video compression such as the HEVC standard, modern networks would not be able to cope with the sheer volume of video data that is transmitted every day.
Thanks to the same kind of open global standards system that has given us 5G, device manufacturers, such as Xiaomi, and streaming companies, can benefit from a suite of video codecs without plowing billions of dollars into their own R&D.
On average it takes around ten years for a standard to move from the initial stages of research to the rollout of early network infrastructure and for the first consumer devices to implement the new standard. Engineers from companies such as InterDigital play a central role in standards development but there is no guarantee that our engineers’ innovations will be incorporated into a standard like 5G.
I know that our engineers are some of the best in the world at predicting and anticipating where innovation in cellular or video is headed, but we don’t get it right 100% of the time. It’s only by filing for patent protection on our technologies, that we can have some assurance that we can recoup a fair and reasonable return on our inventions by licensing our patents to implementers. This enables us to continue to make risky long-term investments in R&D for the next generation of technology.
Each year we invest around half of our recurring revenue into R&D and portfolio development, and we pride ourselves on the quality of our innovation and the depth and strength of our patent portfolio. In recent reports LexisNexis has ranked our 5G and video portfolios among the top-five worldwide when ranked on both quantity and quality. Without our commitment and the commitment of other standards researchers, companies such as Xiaomi may not be able to rapidly gain market share in such a competitive market.
That is why the balance between innovators and implementers is so important to ensure that we continue to invest in standards-based technologies and that consumers benefit from a range of more sophisticated devices. The important role of standards in driving today’s connected world is worth remembering, particularly as we celebrate World Standards Day.

Delivering tangible results for this year’s World IP Day

Apr 2024/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

This week we’re marking both Earth Day and World IP Day. The latter this year is focused on the world’s efforts to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, which means that both days provide an opportunity to stop and reflect on how we’re working towards a more sustainable future.

Intangible assets, including intellectual property, have become the most important drivers of the world’s economy. IP has formed the foundation of the defining shift in many countries over the last 50 years as they have moved from manufacturing-based to knowledge-based economies. According to one analysis, intangible assets now account for 90% of the market value of the S&P 500 – up from 80% in 2015 and 17% in 1975.

These assets, including patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrighted works, not only add value to existing businesses but also provide inventors and creators with the incentives to keep innovating and, in the process, to further economic development and tackle some of the most serious challenges that the world faces.

As well as focusing on humanity’s efforts to fight climate change, the SDGs cover a range of challenges that we face, including improving health and education, lifting more people out of poverty, and fighting the effects of climate change. Unfortunately, there is still work to be done if we want to hit these goals by 2030; one recent study shows that we’re on track on just 15% of the SDGs.

But we should also recognize that innovation, supported by the incentives and protections provided by IP, have a crucial role to play if we are to have a realistic chance of reaching these goals by 2030.

As Darren Tang, the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization wrote recently, “To deliver [on the SDGs], we need to harness the innovation and creative potential of humankind, with intellectual property critical to making this happen. IP incentivizes innovation, rewards creativity and brings new technologies, ideas and concepts to the market.”

At InterDigital we combine a passion for innovation with a long history of changing the way that people connect. More than half of our employees are engineers, more than 90% of whom hold advanced degrees and are named inventors.

Through our research in wireless, advanced video and AI, and through our support of an open, collaborative system for the development of global standards such as 5G, we’re passionate supporters of innovation’s power to open up new opportunities around economic development, improve human life, and fight some of the most challenging threats that we face, such as climate change.

In our Video Lab we have a dedicated team of world leaders in energy aware media. Part of their work is focused on how we can mitigate the energy impact of the billions of hours that people spend streaming video content. At Mobile World Congress earlier this year we showcased a technology that uses AI to lower the energy consumption of a TV or video display without any significant loss in picture quality.

We have also played a leading role in global standards organizations, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), in ensuring that energy consumption and sustainability are considered in the development of technology standards.

Last year a report from LexisNexis recognized our leadership in sustainable innovation and included InterDigital among the top 100 companies whose patented innovations are most focused on SDG-relevant technologies.

As we continue our more than 50-year history of foundational research, licensing our patent portfolio to implementers enables us to keep investing in the kind of research and technology leadership that can play a part in guiding us to a more sustainable future. This would simply not be possible without robust IP protections around the world.

So, it should be of concern that some parts of the world do not clearly recognize the role IP plays in supporting innovation and, in some cases, are taking steps to diminish IP rights, particularly around standardized technologies. This is a clear mistake.

In a global economy that is increasingly driven by intangible assets, we need fair and balanced IP systems to help deliver tangible results in fighting some of the gravest challenges we face.

Unlocking the Sustainable Power of Standards

Oct 2023/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

World Standards Day on October 14th gives us plenty of opportunity to celebrate the many benefits of technology standards such as 5G. Standards enable interoperability between devices; they allow product manufacturers to benefit from considerable economies of scale; they ensure there is a high level of safety and reliability in technologies; and they give R&D specialists an opportunity to focus on their strengths in developing foundational innovation while OEMs can focus on making great devices.
However, with sustainability a big focus for World Standards Day, I would argue that the benefits that standards bring to the global efforts to work towards a more sustainable world, particularly in terms of economic development and climate change, are not well understood.
In many parts of North America, Europe and Asia, we often take for granted the kind of connectivity that we have enjoyed from 1G all the way through to today’s 5G and from every version of the WiFi standard. But, in other, less economically advanced regions, connectivity can help change people’s lives by giving them access to much-needed services.
According to the GSMA’s <a href="https://www.gsma.com/betterfuture/resources/2023-mobile-industry-impact-report-summary"> 2023 Mobile Industry Impact Report</a>, 1.5 billion of the world’s poorest people use mobile internet, 2.3 billion use mobile to access educational information for themselves or their children, and 2.6 billion use mobile financial services.
None of this would be possible without the foundational innovation and standards development that companies like InterDigital carry out and which connects our devices to global 5G, WiFi and other networks.
But standards don’t just drive sustainable development by enabling economic growth and opening up new opportunities for underserved communities. They can also make a significant contribution to lowering energy usage in many of the smartphones, consumer electronics devices and other connected products that we use today.
Some key stakeholders have recognized the role that standards can play. For instance, as part of its <a href="https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market/european-standards/standardisation-policy/standardisation-strategy_en#:~:text=The%20strategy%20proposes%20a%20series,democratic%20values%20in%20technology%20applications.">standardization strategy</a>, the European Commission has highlighted the importance of standards in supporting the continent’s substantial investments in its transition to a greener society.
At InterDigital, our engineers are acutely aware of the need for more sustainable innovation as we face the challenges of a warming planet and I am proud of our leadership in the development of more energy efficient technologies.
For example, in recent years, engineers from our video research lab led an effort to ensure that energy consumption is considered when distributing video content. While the impact of the full digital video distribution chain is mainly driven by consumers, it is important for InterDigital to take a lead in educating the wider video ecosystem.
This is why our engineers initiated work in high-level standards such as ITU, ATSC, DVB as well as more technical standards such as MPEG. At the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) we have contributed to reports and recommendations in the areas of video and program production. In MPEG we have led the MPEG green effort for transmitting information all along the video chain to make energy reduction feasible. Our engineers have also developed Pixel Value Reduction (PVR) solutions which can help reduce the energy consumption of video screens by intelligently optimizing pixel brightness for screens.
Our leadership has not gone unnoticed. Earlier this year InterDigital was <a href="https://ir.interdigital.com/news-events/press-releases/news-details/2023/InterDigital-named-one-of-the-Top-100-leaders-in-sustainable-innovation/default.aspx">recognized</a> by LexisNexis as one of the top 100 companies whose innovation is helping progress towards achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
By making considerations such as energy usage a key part of the standards development process, we can make a powerful impact on the tech industry’s and the world’s broader sustainability targets. I would also argue that a company like InterDigital, one that is purely focused on research and not biased by trying to advance technologies for the benefit of a specific product, plays a particularly important role in ensuring that standards are developed with sustainability firmly in mind.
But it is also clear that more needs to be done. The GSMA’s report shows that the mobile industry’s contributions to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 became stalled in 2022. The lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and other developments have halted progress, according to the GSMA.
Mobile is just one part of the standards-based ecosystem but the wireless space is an excellent example of where innovation can contribute to hitting sustainability targets.
That is why I firmly believe that now more than ever, stakeholders should do all they can to protect and promote global, standardized technologies. If we are to fully meet the very grave sustainability challenges that we face, then the kind of collaborative, consensus-based innovation which characterizes standards development, surely offers one of the best paths forward.
We don’t have time to waste.

Recognizing the power of role models on this World IP Day

Apr 2023/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

Today we mark World Intellectual Property Day, an important moment to reflect on the importance of strong IP protections in the modern innovation economy. At InterDigital we know better than most businesses about the crucial role that intellectual property, especially patents, can play in the success of a company, and our broader ecosystem as a whole.
In many ways, our patents are the products that we take to market. They are the culmination of years of painstaking research by our engineers which provides benefits to billions of consumers thanks to the way our innovation delivers new experiences in wireless and video.
This World IP Day’s theme of “Women and IP: accelerating innovation and creativity” also gives us an opportunity to explain why more must be done to increase the number of female innovators and bolster the number of women who contribute to and benefit from the global IP ecosystem.
It is clear that our industry is still falling short. According to a March 2021 <a href="https://www.wipo.int/women-and-ip/en/news/2021/news_0002.html#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20women%20inventors%20filed%20international%20patent%20applications,and%20third%20highest%20shares%20%2817.4%25%20and%2016.5%25%20respectively%29.">report</a> by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), only 16.5% of inventors named on international patent applications in 2020 were women. While the proportion has steadily increased compared to previous years, progress is slow: at current rates, gender parity will not be achieved until 2058.
In the United States, the picture is no better: a recent <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/oce-women-patentees-report.pdf">report</a> from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) found that women made up just 13% of all inventor-patentees in the United States. The report cited research that, if women were to patent at the same rate as men, commercialized patents could increase by 24% and per capita GDP by 2.7%.
To maximize the potential of IP and innovation, more needs to be done to promote diversity throughout the innovation ecosystem. This will require a big effort throughout all facets of society, from supporting women to engage in and study STEM subjects at school and college, to being open-minded in recruitment and promotion, and overcoming economic obstacles to career progression.
At InterDigital, we recognize the importance of having a diverse workforce in helping us to stay at the forefront of developing cutting edge technology in wireless and video. This helps to promote equal opportunities and it also enhances research by bringing new perspectives to technical challenges.
According to our latest data, 28% of our submitted invention disclosures include a named female inventor, as did 34% of our live patents and applications. While these figures put InterDigital ahead of market trends - according to a 2020 USPTO <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/economic-research/publications/reports/progress-potential">report</a> 21.9% of US patents included at least one female inventor - we recognize there is still a long way to go to reach gender parity.
As USPTO Director Kathi Vidal has <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/latest-uspto-report-finds-32-increase-number-us-counties-where-women-patented">made clear</a>, increasing the number of women inventors on patents is “critical for job growth and economic prosperity.” I couldn’t agree more, and I applaud Director Vidal for the leadership she has shown in this area.
We also know the importance that role models play in encouraging women and underrepresented groups to pursue careers in industries that suffer from a lack of diversity. As the activist Marian Wright Adelman said, “you can’t be what you cannot see.” That’s why, this week, as we mark World IP Day, we’re highlighting several of our female engineers and innovators from our world-class research and innovation team who are helping to shape what is possible for the future.
These outstanding women, Diana Pani and Catalina Mladin from our wireless lab and Valerie Allie and Gaëlle Martin-Cocher from our video lab, are respected innovators who are recognized by their colleagues and industry peers as leaders in their respective fields. But their impact is even greater by the example that they set for other women to follow as they consider careers in engineering.
We know that more needs to be done to grow diversity in IP, but we should also take this opportunity to celebrate our role models and the trails that they have blazed for so many more brilliant, innovative minds to follow.

E Pluribus Unum – How Standards Drive the World Around Us

Oct 2022/ Posted By: Liren Chen, President and CEO, InterDigital

As we mark this year’s <a href="https://www.worldstandardsday.org/home.html">World Standards Day</a>, it is worth celebrating the crucial role standards play in facilitating the global spread of advanced technologies and new devices while continually laying the groundwork for what comes next. By ensuring interoperability, standards provide the bedrock for entire technology ecosystems, on top of which trillions of dollars of economic activity might be built.
The importance of standards is only growing. We are sitting on the cusp of a fourth industrial revolution during which we expect to see rapid advances in the digitalization of broad swaths of the global economy from manufacturing to healthcare, and from transportation to energy. This shift will be enabled in large part by the ongoing advances being made in the standardized technologies in cellular wireless, WiFi, and in video.
At a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, it is also worth stressing that standards are a byword for global cooperation. Companies, academia, and other stakeholders cooperate with each other at the technical level in order to advance the best solutions for each design requirement. This process is highly competitive and only the best advances make the grade.
Of course, participants are not just participating for personal glory. Standards thrive because of commercial incentives and the promise of advancing existing markets or developing new ones. That’s true for device manufacturers but also for those companies that invest heavily in associated R&D, engage in the standards process, and then license their related standard essential patents to OEMs.
At InterDigital we have been carrying out scientific research in standards-based connected technologies on a commercial basis for the majority of our 50-year existence. Many of our engineers have held leadership positions in various SDOs and our years of research have helped us build a portfolio of more than 28,000 patents. Today the company is recognized as one of the principal contributors to standards in a broad range of connected technologies.
InterDigital's business model is built on investment in foundational scientific research, active participation in standards development organizations worldwide, and the licensing of the company’s innovation to companies that implement this tech in their devices, such as smartphones, laptops and TVs.
Recently this work has been given even greater significance as governments around the world have emphasized the importance of standardized technologies.
In the U.S., the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Kathi Vidal, has been leading the charge in pushing American companies to be more closely involved in standards development. Recently she <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/advancing-u-s-interests-abroad?utm_campaign=subscriptioncenter&utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=">wrote</a> that the U.S. must, “Continue to encourage U.S. participation in standard-setting organizations and the efficient and effective adoption of those technologies by our industries, as part of our efforts to promote innovation in the standards space and drive sustainable, long-term growth in the U.S. economy.”
I couldn’t agree more. And to put that long-term growth into perspective, according to a recent <a href="https://www.interdigital.com/white_papers/state-of-5g-report-enabling-the-boundless-generation">report</a> from ABI Research, 5G is forecast to create $7 trillion in economic value in 2030 alone.
As a U.S. headquartered company, we at InterDigital understand the importance that standards can play in a country’s economic resilience. But we also appreciate that standards contribute the most to the world economy when they are global in scope and collaborative by nature. On this World Standards Day that is a message that’s worth reiterating.

Results