In recent years, the relevance of communication technology has steadily been increasing. This technology is represented by technical standards as a means for faster technology diffusion and regulation. In turn, they are supported by standard-essential patents (SEPs) that protect inventions related to the standard and can be licensed as a pool. However, there is no standard-essentiality check, which induces patent applicants to declare either too many or too few patents as standard-essential. In this article, we address the latter deficiency and define a new patent strategy, namely the watchful waiting strategy. Here, patent applicants file patents that are very similar to SEPs without subsequently declaring them standard-essential. We use topic modeling and deep learning to assess SEPs and non-SEPs of 5G technology for standard-essentiality. The results provide information on the type of applicants holding watchful waiting patents. This entails several implications for companies, patent attorneys, and researchers, as the process model presented for identifying watchful waiting patents reduces the risk of patent litigation for companies wishing to use the standard. At the same time, rethinking the current process of SEP declaration opens up new avenues for policy makers and standard-setting organizations.

中文翻译：

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标准必要专利的警惕等待策略：以5G技术为例

近年来，通信技术的相关性不断增强。该技术以技术标准为代表，作为更快技术传播和监管的手段。反过来，它们又得到标准必要专利 (SEP) 的支持，这些专利保护与标准相关的发明，并且可以作为专利池进行许可。然而，没有标准必要性检查，这导致专利申请人将太多或太少的专利声明为标准必要性。在本文中，我们解决了后者的缺陷并定义了一种新的专利策略，即观察等待策略。在这里，专利申请人提交的专利与标准必要专利非常相似，但随后并未声明它们是标准必要专利。我们使用主题建模和深度学习来评估 5G 技术的标准必要专利和非标准必要专利的标准必要性。结果提供了有关持有观察等待专利的申请人类型的信息。这对公司、专利律师和研究人员产生了一些影响，因为用于识别观察等待专利的流程模型降低了希望使用该标准的公司的专利诉讼风险。与此同时，重新思考当前的标准必要专利申报流程为政策制定者和标准制定组织开辟了新的途径。