Ericsson signs LTE patent deals

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson has signed its first license agreements for LTE technology patents, allowing other companies to use the technology, an Ericsson official said on Monday.

Gustav Brismark, vice president of patent strategies at Ericsson, told Reuters the firm already had more than 80 similar patent agreements in place for earlier mobile network technologies, such as GSM and WCDMA.

"The first agreements including LTE have been signed, and over time more or less all these agreements will be renegotiated to include LTE, but that will not be done in a day," he said.

LTE, or Long Term Evolution, is a new high-speed mobile network technology, intended to boost capacity in wireless networks to cope with increasing data traffic.