[contravariant]

Today I learned SEPs, standard essential patents, are a thing. How on earth adhering to a public standard can be considered an invention is beyond me, nor is how we got to the point that it is common enough to require its own special treatment.

Maybe someone can change my mind on why this is an invention worth monopolising, but I doubt it.

[rocqua]

Sadly it works the other way around, and this has a tendency to infect standardization proceedings.

If you can put some technology that uses your patents in a standard like WiFi or 5G, that is a license to print money. There are plenty of good ideas that should be in a standard that are patented. Leaving aside the issue of whether it's good those patents exist, you do want that technology in the standards. So it's not like you can say 'all IEEE standards should be patent free'.

As a result lots of standardization meetings involve most participants subtly (or not so subtly) advocating for technical decisions that would mean some patent is used.

[cornholio]

The typical standards process is an adaptation to a world where patents exist. It tries to clearly determine what patents are required to build a technology, and will typically lump them up into a patent pool available for a nominal licensing fee. Participants are strongly incentivized to disclose any essential patents they hold and include them in the pool, so as a standards implementer you know that once you pay the fee, nobody will sue you.

The alternative - again, in the same real world where patents exist - is to craft a very fragile standard around the patents that you know of, without the participation of the industry, only to be whacked with a submarine patent as soon as the standard becomes dominant and can't - in the legal opinion of the "inventor" - be implemented without their innovative brainberry. That can still happen within the previous workflow, but at least you involve early on most holders of IP related to that field.

Of course, none of this precludes the notion that a better world is possible, say one where any inventor has to prove substantial investment before patentability (say, medical studies and drug approval), and can only recoup those investments up to a limited multiplier.

[rocqua]

That is a part of the process I hadn't considered. I was looking at the incentive of participants to have their patents in the standard. But it makes total sense that everyone who will implement the standard (which tends to involve the participants) wants no surprises around patents.

[rjsw]

Participants in ISO standardization meetings are required to disclose any patents that they hold that may apply to whatever is being discussed.

[derf_]

> So it's not like you can say 'all IEEE standards should be patent free'.

What? Sure you can. See the W3C patent policy, as one example: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20200915/

That other organizations do not do that is a choice.

[rocqua]

W3C is almost pure software. That is an area where patents shouldn't exist, and luckily an area where patents are not ubiquitous.

For things like WiFi, or 5G, there is a lot more room for 'real' patents. Because there is a lot more hardware/electronics design in there. Aswell as there being a culture that is much more accepting of patents which means a lot more of the design space is covered by patents.

[doikor]

It goes the other way around.

First you make the tech (and the patents associated with it) and then push it through the standards body to make it part of a standard. That is the point when it becomes a standard essential patent.

[helsinkiandrew]

And usually the standards body require FRAND terms from the IPR 'donators' - they commit to license the tech using fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. They shouldn't deny a license or charge too much, with the idea being that they'll gain more from having interoperable products rather than maximise licensing royalties.

[tinus_hn]

The idea is you have an invention and then try to have the standard require your invention. The parties that create the standard are supposed to declare the patents they have that cover the standard and then typically there is some licensing authority where manufacturers can pay a fee to have a license for all the patents involved.

On one hand it’s reasonable because the inventors spent money on researching the new things that are in the new standard. On the other hand it can be rather unfortunate, especially if it’s software, because with open-source there is no way to pay and get a license.