Intellectual Property Rights and Standard-Setting Organizations

Mark A Lemley, University of California, Berkeley

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 6/1/2002)

In this article, Mark Lemley attempts to fill the relative void in current literature regarding SDOs and their intellectual property policies, based upon the author's survey of the intellectual property policies of numerous organizations, primarily in the industries of computer networking and telecommunications. The article provides a background discussion of these organizations, assesses the value of standards development in network markets, demonstrates the diversity among such organizations as to treatment of intellectual property, addresses the impact of antitrust laws on these organizations and their intellectual property policies, analyzes several unresolved legal issues regarding the applicability and enforcement of intellectual property policies for such organizations and offers relevant suggestions to scholars, law-makers and SDOs