An Overview of the Public Policy Impact on Standards Development

John W. Bagby, Professor of Information Sciences & Technology, Co-Director - Institute for Information Policy Pennsylvania State University

6/13/2008
(Original Publish Date: 10/1/2005)

In recent history and for many modern technologies, standards have arisen through three primary modes: (1) government imposition of de jure standards, (2) industry-wide negotiation of voluntary consensus standards (VCS) and (3) proprietary technology achieving market success as a de facto standard.2 This chapter overviews the concepts underlying contemporary legal environment of standardization - a survey in breadth of the attendant public policy constraints and opportunities. These legal concepts are derived from antitrust, intellectual property (IP), contract law, due process and tort law and they influence standards development activities (SDA) by standards development organizations (SDO).