In centuries past, colonial powers used the cheap labor provided by their new subjects to extract resources, and their new colonies as captive markets for their own manufactured goods. Today, similar results can be achieved with much less effort when royalty bearing patent claims are embedded in the standards for products such as DVD players and cellular phones. If the royalties are high enough, the patent owners can have such products built in emerging countries using cheap local labor, and sell them there and globally under their own brands. Meanwhile, emerging company manufacturers can’t afford to build similar products at all. Governments in developed nations should use their purchasing power to impede, rather than support, such “standards based neocolonialism.”