XPE: General topic v3.0, page-47

I started going through the patent US20120021684 filed by Xped and found it quite interesting. http://www.google.com/patents/US20120021684


Under the 'Application' tab if you scroll down to 'Referenced by' it lists all other patents filed by other companies that reference's Xped's patent.

Apple and Sonos have patents citing Xped...now see the video and see what products appear on the DeB



Under the 'Grant' tab ( http://www.google.com/patents/US20120021684) if you scroll down to 'Patent Citations', some of those companies on the list are:

- Koninklijke Philips Electronics N. V. (Philips Lighting is one of their operations )
- Sony
- AT&T

Also note that this Xped patent is referenced  by Sonos in 3 of their own patents.


Also a little background  info I found about patents there is a section I'd like to quote (http://www.leydesdorff.net/indicators/lesson5.htm):

' The number of citations a patent has can also been seen to be linked to the market value of the company owning the patent and the value of the technology (Hall, Jaffe et al. 2005).What we see is that it’s not just what patents cite yours, but also how many, which may determine the eventual value status of your patent and accordingly, your product.'

I  am not familiar with the composition of patent applications/ grants but can you assume that there is some knowledge sharing going on between these companies that cite/ reference each other? And if so is it reasonable to infer some of these companies may be collaborating on something??