The Relationship between Standards and IP Rights in the ICT sector

The number of ICT standards is increasing every day. As discussed in this book, ICT Standards create common platforms, protocols, procedures, designs to achieve safety, security, interoperability, interchangeability and market convenience in the ICT industry. Standardisation can take different forms, ranging from the adoption of consensus based standards by the recognized European or national standard bodies (the Standard Development (or setting) Organisations' (SDOs)), through informal organisations (consortia), to agreements between independent companies. Many large technology based firms have created independent departments to extract value from patents and copyright through licensing. Additional value can be extracted by joining formal or informal standardisation initiatives and finally by licensing its IPRs -on FRAND terms- to users of the new standard that contains the IPRs of a firm. This book makes it clear that standards interfere almost necessarily with IPRs of private companies, that standards and IPRs serve different objectives but necessarily have to co-exist in the same industrial and commercial environment.