On the desk today · InterDigital
They never built a phone. They just own the right to make one.
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$1 quadrillion would be enough to send a check for $2.8 million to every man, woman, and child in America.
That's how big this opportunity is.
And you could claim a stake today…
Before the company goes public…
Starting with just $500.
The Invisible
Toll on Every Call
In the summer of 1968, a young stock trader sat on the beach in Atlantic City and couldn't stop thinking about money. He just couldn't get a trade quote without leaving the beach. He wanted to know the numbers without going inside. That frustration, of all things, would turn into a quiet empire that collects a royalty every time someone makes a call anywhere on Earth.
His name was Sherwin Seligsohn. A high school dropout who made a fortune in the stock market before thirty. And starting in 1968, he spent three years obsessing over one idea: a portable wireless telephone. In 1971 he presented a working prototype — the world's first wireless handheld analog phone. In 1972 he incorporated International Mobile Machines Corporation in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
I walked past a cell phone store last week and didn't give it a second thought. That's the thing about this business — you never see it. I can spend an hour in an Apple store, hold every device on the shelf, and never once think about the company collecting a royalty on nearly all of them. No retail presence. No consumer brand. It doesn't make a single phone or sell a single app.
Most people think of InterDigital — if they think of it at all — as a patent troll. That framing is almost entirely wrong. A troll buys someone else's patents and threatens lawsuits. InterDigital invented what it holds. Its engineers designed the foundational protocols that made 3G possible. Then 4G. Then 5G. Their fingerprints are in the air interface specifications every smartphone manufacturer must comply with. When you say "standards-essential patent," that's what you mean. Not optional. Mandatory. You cannot build a compliant 5G device without using what InterDigital invented.
By 1992, the company acquired SCS Mobilecom and SCS Telecom — two firms with deep Code Division Multiple Access patents — and took the name InterDigital Communications Corporation. The strategy became singular: stop making products, start licensing knowledge. Let Apple and Samsung build the hardware. InterDigital would own the rights and collect a toll at the gate.
Today that toll is worth real money. In 2025, InterDigital collected $834 million in revenue. Smartphone revenue alone hit $678.9 million — an all-time record. The company holds roughly 38,000 patents and patent applications. Eight of the ten largest smartphone manufacturers — covering about 85% of the global market — pay them. Apple pays. Samsung pays. Both are licensed through the end of the decade.
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The stickiness here is not a product feature or a loyalty program. It's physics. Once the wireless standard bakes in a particular technology, every manufacturer must license it or build non-compliant devices no network will accept. That's the retention mechanism. A company can decide to stop paying royalties to Visa. There's no equivalent way to stop paying InterDigital and still make a phone that works.
The pricing power is equally structural. When Samsung's prior agreement expired, an ICC arbitration panel set new terms in 2025. The result: roughly $131 million annually through 2030 — about 67% more than the previous deal. Samsung didn't walk. They couldn't walk. CEO Liren Chen said it plainly: "Our agreement with Samsung is the largest license InterDigital has ever signed, worth more than $1 billion in total contract value over eight years." The rate went up. The customer signed anyway.
I think the Disney story tells you something important about how this model operates at full tilt. InterDigital had been building its case for years — asserting patents on video compression technologies that Disney's streaming services use every time they send you an episode. In 2025, courts in Brazil and Germany issued injunctions. Five cases decided. Five wins. Then came enforcement proceedings against Amazon. If you streamed anything last year, there's a real chance the technology involved sits inside an InterDigital patent. These aren't fringe patents on obscure algorithms. They're essential patents on the compression standards the entire internet depends on.
The flywheel is expansion. Smartphones are already a $582-million ARR machine. Since 2021, InterDigital has pushed into adjacent categories — laptops, IoT devices, electric vehicle chargers. HP signed in early 2025, covering over half the global PC market. A major social media company took a CE device license in Q4. The stated target: $1 billion in ARR by 2030. I think of it as a company methodically adding toll gates to roads that didn't exist five years ago.
WHY THIS WORKS
Standards-essential = inescapable. InterDigital's core patents aren't optional features — they're baked into the 3G, 4G, and 5G specifications every device must comply with. The moat isn't brand loyalty or switching cost. It's physics and international standards bodies.
Zero cost of goods. Once the research is done and the patents are filed, licensing them is nearly free. That's why a 71% adjusted EBITDA margin is sustainable, not a fluke. Every incremental dollar of new licensing revenue flows almost entirely to the bottom line.
Long-dated contracts with built-in renewal leverage. Licenses run for multi-year terms, creating a predictable revenue base. When they expire, InterDigital negotiates from a position of structural necessity — the licensee must re-sign or stop making compliant devices. Samsung's 2025 renewal came in about 67% higher than its predecessor.
The portfolio grows faster than it ages. InterDigital added roughly 4,800 new patents and applications in 2025 alone — a 14% increase to ~38,000. Their engineers are already deep in 6G standards development. Today's research becomes tomorrow's mandatory license. The conveyor belt doesn't stop.
Over 90% of InterDigital's engineers are inventors. Most hold advanced degrees. The company holds chair positions within 3GPP — the international body that sets cellular specifications — making it one of the most influential private contributors to the standards process in the world. This means InterDigital doesn't just license the last generation of wireless technology. It helps write the next one. By the time 6G arrives, InterDigital's patents will already be inside it.
