Rather than fight patent lawsuits on an individual basis, 10 mobile phone carriers and electronics manufacturers are forming a patent pool to protect themselves from future litigation surrounding the use of 4G technology. Details on this patent licensing program were reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Companies will donate their standard essential patents to the collective and cross-license them to the other members of the group. Patents will be licensed on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) terms.

Via Licensing, a patent licensing firm and subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories, will oversee the group, which includes AT&T, HP, Clearwire, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom, ZTE and DTVG, a subsidiary of DirecTV. Noticeably absent are major companies such as Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia.

[Via The Mac Observer]