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Is BLE changing licensing policy?

Martin

Sorry for the non-tech. question but I just heard that BlueTooth group is significantly changing BLE licensing policy. Maybe it's some kind of FUD but it should be mandatory to pay a thousands of $ for BLE licensing fee (BLE patents) per one developed device model that is using a BLE module and going to the market. Even the definition of own attributes (UUIDS) would be charged. Is it true? If so, it's going to kill all start-up projects and projects not intended to sell high volumes of BLE enabled devices...

  • 0

    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...

  • 0 in reply to Martin

    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!

  • 0

    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!

  • 0

    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:

    1. we are not going to use any Bluetooth logo or trademark on box, device
    2. device will use the only proprietary BLE service
    3. we don't event want to be compatible with any other profile or service
    4. BLE is not the main service of our product
    5. 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?

  • 0 in reply to Volodymyr

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

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