Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting in the Global Economy - Lessons from Information and Communications Technology (Paperback)

Standards are technical specifications that describe certain features of products and services. Standards are used, among other things, to assure minimum safety, health, and environmental efficacy levels; to dictate minimum levels of information that must be provided to the public; and to signify compliance with specified performance characteristics. Many standards enable products designed and produced by different companies to operate and communicate with one another. Such interoperability standards, when implemented broadly across markets, give rise to beneficial network effects and efficiencies. Interoperability standards are important in many industries but particularly characterize the information technology, mobile telephone, and consumer electronics sectors. Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting the Global Economy focuses on information and communication technologies. This report examines how leading national, regional, and multinational standards bodies address issues of intellectual property arising in connection with the development of technical standards. It considers policies with respect to such matters as requirements for the disclosure of IP essential or relevant to the development and implementation of standards; the terms of IP licensing to implementers of a standard; and whether conditions attached to IP incorporated in standards carry over to a new holder in the event of a transfer of IP rights. This study further assesses how these policies work in practice and in a legal context and how variations in these policies relate to different types of standards activities, organizations, and fields of technology. Finally, Patent Challenges for Standard-Setting in the Global Economy evaluates the effectiveness of these policies in reducing conflict between IP holders and other implementers, balancing the interests of firms of different sizes and with different business models, and balancing the interests of producers and consumers.