Unwired Planet, LLC is a non-practicing entity (NPE) focused exclusively on intellectual property licensing and enforcement. The company, formerly known as Openwave Systems Inc., transitioned in May 2012 by selling its product businesses to Marlin Equity Partners to concentrate solely on its patent portfolio. Headquartered in Reno, Nevada, Unwired Planet operates with a small team, reportedly having "16 employees and no products" in 2014, and describes itself as a company whose core asset is its patent portfolio. Unwired Planet, LLC was subsequently acquired by PanOptis, also known as Optis.
Unwired Planet's operations revolve entirely around monetizing its patent assets. Its portfolio, significantly bolstered by the 2013 acquisition of 2,185 U.S. and international patents and pending applications from Ericsson, is primarily focused on mobile communications. These patents cover foundational technologies for 2G, 3G, and LTE, as well as cloud-based mobile applications, telecommunications infrastructure, signal processing, network protocols, radio resource management, and mobility management. Many of these are declared Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs), which are critical to telecommunications standards.
Consistent with its business model, Unwired Planet maintains a patent assertion posture, primarily acting as a plaintiff in litigation to enforce its intellectual property rights. The company has one tracked case as a plaintiff and zero as a defendant in our database. This sole tracked case, Optis Wireless Technology, LLC et al. v. Apple Inc., was filed in 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, a venue recognized for its plaintiff-friendly environment.
Beyond its U.S. activities, Unwired Planet has been a prominent litigant in significant international patent disputes. Notably, the company pursued extensive litigation against Huawei, Samsung, and Google in UK courts, establishing important legal precedents regarding the licensing of Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs) on Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The UK Supreme Court's 2020 decision in Unwired Planet v. Huawei notably affirmed the English courts' power to set global FRAND license rates for SEPs.