Standard-Essential Patent Licensing Comes to Medtech
- Timothy Syrett, Annsley Ward
- 4.21.2025
In an article published in the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Journal, Partners Timothy Syrett and Annsley Merelle Ward provide background on patent issues that arise with using connectivity standards and explore the growth of using such standards in medical care, among other topics.
Excerpt: “Connected technology products are a part of daily life. Connectivity standards – such as 5G and Wi-Fi – provide a common language that allows products from different manufacturers to communicate with each other. But beyond the mundane household tasks of your refrigerator alerting your smartphone that you are out of milk, such standards are increasingly being used to facilitate medical care, including, for example, in wearable or implanted devices that can report patient information to healthcare providers in real time, telehealth appointments with medical professionals, and remote surgical proceedings. This network of medical devices, hardware, and software that are interconnected through the internet (often by way of connectivity standards) is referred to as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) – a subset of the Internet of Things (IoT) to which your talking refrigerator belongs.”
