Standards Organizations Express Concern About Royalty Fees for ISO Codes.

Robin Cover, Editor, Cover Pages

2/11/2008
(Original Publish Date: 12/19/2003)

W3C, the Unicode Technical Committee, INCITS (International Committee for Information Technology Standards), NISO (National Information Standards Organization), Health Level Seven (HL7), the Internet Architecture Board, and IPTC have recently published statements of concern about ISO\'s interpretation of law and policy on the collection of royalty payments for the use of ISO codes. The data elements in question involve several ISO standards that are often referenced in Internet infrastructure specifications and protocols, and code lists that are widely implemented in language-sensitive text processing software. The lists include ISO 639 \'Codes for the representation of names of languages\', ISO 3166 \'Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions\', and ISO 4217 \'Codes for the representation of currencies and funds\'. ISO has clarified that \"generally, software developers or commercial resellers requesting permission to embed the data elements contained in an ISO Code in their products for resale will be asked to purchase the Code in electronic format and pay either an annual fee or a one-time fee and any applicable maintenance fees required.\" The letters from the several standards bodies appeal [to ISO and ANSI] for reversal of the ISO interpretation and policy.