The little committee that grew

Gary S Robinson

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 1999)

Once upon a time in a faraway place (Piscataway, New Jersey), there was a lonely IEEE staff person who spent about one hour a month reviewing standards patent issues. This person grew into a tiny committee. Over time, a group of big bad bears came along and raised some interesting standards patent issues. To protect the IEEE staff person from being eaten up by these bears, the IEEE Standards Board formed the Patent Committee, PatCom, about four years ago. This tiny committee consisted of a chair, a member from the IEEE Standards Department, a lawyer, and a secretary. PatCom members met for a couple of hours during each Standards Board meeting, ate cookies, and reviewed issues raised by the standards technical committees. Then the tiny committee grew some more. The last meeting of PatCom still had its original four members, but the number of guests grew into a forest of people. The meeting was long, and the members got into difficult issues and heard many different views. Why did the interest in the committee grow so much? Why has the simple world of standards patents become so complicated?