Is BLE changing licensing policy?

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Volodymyr — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:21:45 GMT

Thank you, moved see edited comment

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Ulrich Myhre — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 23:06:58 GMT

Please post this as a separate question. This question has been marked as solved and will likely receive little attention.

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Volodymyr — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 22:14:03 GMT

Thank you guys for this helpful topic. I don't want to create other topic since this one mostly covers my situation. My company is ready to get SIG membership for BLE usage and pay the fee. Other question is whether we need to pass qualification test if:

we are not going to use any Bluetooth logo or trademark on box, device
device will use the only proprietary BLE service
we don't event want to be compatible with any other profile or service
BLE is not the main service of our product
BLE will be used between our product and our application.

I would be really thankful for a piece of help. PS. Tried to understand legal documents but as already mentioned above, I am not lawyer too.

As it was suggested, question was moved to separate thread Moved to Is BLE qualification required for proprietary service?

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Janek Mann — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 13:44:12 GMT

To add to what Ole has mentioned, other than the trademark license that allows the use of the various Bluetooth SIG trademarks, the agreement with the SIG (and following the terms of qualifying / licensing a product) also covers the use of the patents in the Bluetooth SIG patent pool, so if you don't qualify / pay the fee the product would not be covered by the patent agreement and you could be sued by the SIG or the member companies for violation of the patents in the pool. In the US they could also get importation stopped through the ITC.

I'm no lawyer, so take all that with a grain of salt!

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Ole Morten — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 10:15:58 GMT

I believe that there are products in the market that uses Bluetooth low energy, but that are not qualified. This could very well be a risky thing to do from a legal perspective, so this is a consideration you'll have to do yourself.

I don't really think it's feasible to implement Gazell or ESB on a smartphone, since I believe most APIs available even to the kernel is on a too high level for this. However, I'd love to be proven wrong. :-)

However, if you don't have any further questions, I think my first reply answered your original question, so I'd be happy if you could accept it as an answer, to clear things up!

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Martin — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 16:53:32 GMT

Well, it would be quite acceptable if it will be possible to sell BLE devices without BLE logo and qualify it later. But I'm afraid that they can enforce fees simply if BLE stack is used regardless of using the logo or not. Please let us know if you get some additional info about this case. Thakns.

BTW do you think that some of alternative protocol like Gazell or Ant can be implemented freely on existing smartphones with BLE? Of course it would take some effort to write e.g. Android kernel driver, API and application. If they use simple radio chip with HCI and L2CAP protocol it would be possible but if they use module with embedded stack then no way...

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Ole Morten — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 16:02:02 GMT

There is currently no way to avoid this fee if you want to qualify your design and use the Bluetooth logo and similar in marketing, no matter how low-volume your product is. You can choose to not qualify your product, but the legal implications of doing so is not clear.

I do see your arguments, but this is the way it is, so I'm afraid I can't do much about it.

Since this fee is for Bluetooth qualification, it doesn't affect devices using proprietary protocols in any way.

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Martin — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 15:57:31 GMT

Is there really not some exclusion for low-volume production? E.g. if we make some special sensor with BLE that will be produced let's say in only 100 pieces, then price of licence significantly affect price of the device. Or if someone will come with some startup project making small first batch of devices then license price will block selling it and spreading it out. This makes a huge advantage for big companies that can start produce with high volumes where the fee become negligible and make disadvantage for small companies. I think it will lead to creating new license-free technology as an alternative for BLE. Maybe it will be enough to use alternative stack like Gasell or something else on existing hardware if HW is not covered by Bluetooth SIG patents...

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Ole Morten — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 15:34:21 GMT

It is true that February brought a new process for qualification, and it is no longer possible to qualify a Bluetooth product without paying any fees, as it was previously.

I'd recommend you to go through and read the information that's available on Bluetooth SIG's web site, for example here and here. There will probably be an update to our qualification whitepaper, but this isn't quite ready yet.

The cheapest way is to be a part of the Innovation Incentive Program, in which case a listing is $2,500, but have certain restrictions on company revenue and number of designs. For regular Adopters, the price is $8000, while for Associates, the price is $4000.

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Martin — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 14:15:07 GMT

A colleague told me, he received some email with PDF from Bluetooth SIG. One is titled "LISTING PROCESS–NEW IN FEBRUARY 2014" talking about some declaration process where "With this update, we are discontinuing the QDID fee and introducing a new listing fee—either USD 8,000 or USD 4,000 depending on membership level —and issuing a Declaration ID as your proof of purchase." and second document "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE UPDATED QUALIFICATION AND LISTING PROCESS" I don't have time to read them yet, I'm working on programming...

RE: Is BLE changing licensing policy?

wlgrd — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 18:13:16 GMT

And where would you have heard such a thing?