Intellectual Property Law

Analysis on Balance - Standardisation and Patents - by Georg Greve, President, FSFE

By Pamela Jones et al.

Analysis on balance - Standardisation and Patents
- by Georg C. F. Greve
FSFE, President

This paper provides an analysis of the interaction of patents and standards and finishes with some concrete proposals to address the most pressing issues. It was written under the assumption of very little background knowledge, and therefore provides some of the background necessary to understand the issue. An expert in the field should be able to skip the Background section.

Introduction

Software patents have been a hugely controversial debate, with lines of battle drawn primarily between large corporations holding large patent portfolios and engaged in multiple cross-licensing deals, and the Have-Nots, entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises, and software users from the student using GNU/Linux all the way to institutional users in governments.

This debate got a lot quieter with the rejection of the software patent directive in 2005. Its place in the headlines was taken by other debates, such as standardisaton. Open Standards have been a buzzword for years, but never has this term been discussed more intensively.

On Wednesday, 19 November 2008, both debates met in Brussels at a workshop titled "IPR in ICT standardisation", although "Patents in ICT standardisation" would have been a more suitable name because the discussion was exlusively about the interaction of patents and ICT standardisation.

Patents and standards are fundamentally at odds, so many people call for a balance between patents and standards. This article comments upon the workshop and explains why standards should prevail over patents at least in the area of software.

Full post as published by Groklaw on December 02, 2008 (boomark / email).