17 Mar 2004
DRAFT Criteria (in development) for the Evaluation of a patent policy for a Standards Setting Organization
This First public DRAFT Dated Monday March 15, 2004 is intended only for stimulation of discussion and comments
... intended to be helpful to compare and contrast the patent policies of standards developing organizations in a consistent and logical manner. The list in development is part of a project of GTW Associates contracted for by the Japan New Energy and Industrial Development Organization in conjunction with the Japan Strategic Program for the Creation, Protection and Exploitation of Intellectual Property
GTW concluded in May, 2002 comments to the US FTC there is diversity in the specific approach to Intellectual property rights policies of standards developers around the world. Such diversity itself does not equate to a major problem. The diversity of IPR approaches within standards setting bodies allows these bodies to "compete" for the business of developing standards based on (among many factors) the power of the applicable IPR policy to attract and hold the interest of key stakeholder participants. There is a balance of the level of risks and costs that that will attract participants to the standards table.
At present, it is possible to begin to discriminate among various organizations. However in many cases there is insufficient information to make a truly informed decision. What is critical for such competition is that it occur in full daylight with clarity and transparency. The preparation of a list of criteria for comparison of IPR policies hopefully will represent a step towards such clarity and transparency
GTW Associates requests comments and feedback on the list by April 15, 2004 in order to refine and improve it before applying the criteria to evaluate the patent polices of several standards developing organizations. Comments may be sent to gtw@gtwassociates.com or may be posted to an on line discussion web GTW welcomes additional criteria that may be helpful and editorial suggestions or revisions of the preliminary criteria to improve their wording.
The work builds on Intellectual Property Rights Polices of selected Standards developers by GTW Associates May 2002; Intellectual Property Rights as a factor in the development of Standards by GTW Associates January 1998; Considerations in assessment a standards developing organization's Intellectual Property Rights policies in advance of Participating by GTW Associates June 2002; Antitrust, Intellectual Property and Standard setting Organizations , 2002 research by Mark A Lemley. University of California at Berkeley; Intellectual Property Rights Policies (undated) by Andrew Updegrove and A non-exhaustive list of IPR issues faced by Standards Setting Organizations (SSO) contributed to the ITU-T 2003 Informal Forum Summit (San Francisco, 23-25 July 2003)
[...]