One of the risks to the future of unified platforms to support the Internet of Things is the fragmentation of standards and intellectual property. Organizations from a wide range of vertical industries are contributing to the underlying systems, along with web and communications players, but while this is creating rich innovation, it also raises the question of how patents licensing will be managed. Ericsson has stepped forward, creating a virtual licensing platform which it wants to establish as a dominant ‘independent’ mechanism for coordinating IPR across many areas of IoT standards, as they relate to connected devices for vertical markets. There are all kinds of ironies about one of the bastions of the mobile industry’s tightly closed standards and patents…