Apple Offers Royalty-Free Patent Licenses to Push Proposed Nano-SIM Standard

FOSS Patents reports that it has seen a letter sent by Apple to the European Telecommunications Standards Institutes (ETSI) committing to offer royalty-free license to its nano-SIM design patents. Apple pushes “nano-SIM” design as the official next-generation standard to further reduce the size of the removable cards.

A perfectly reliable source that I can't disclose has shown me a letter dated March 19, 2012 that a senior Apple lawyer sent to ETSI. The letter addresses the primary concern of critics of the proposal. The FT said that "the Apple-led proposal has caused some concern among its rivals that the US group might eventually own the patents". But Apple's letter has removed this roadblock, if it ever was any, through an unequivocal commitment to grant royalty-free licenses to any Apple patents essential to nano-SIM, provided that Apple's proposal is adopted as a standard and that all other patent holders accept the same terms in accordance with the principle of reciprocity.

Such “nano-SIM” standard would enable Apple to design smaller and thinner devices or to utilize some of the space within existing device volumes for other components.