One of the most hoped-for outcomes from the move towards 5G must be an overdue shake-up of patent royalties in the mobile industry. There is rising influence of open source, and of more collaborative approaches, like Google’s series of cross-licensing deals with major players (in effect, litigation truces). On the other hand, at the dawn of 4G, hopes of an end to the secretive bilateral deals which characterize mobile licensing were dashed. There are just too many companies with a deep investment in extracting royalties from their IPR in the old profitable way, whether those are major vendors or trolls. And while the settlement of Nokia’s litigation with Apple, which was announced last week, does indicate that some things are…