Standardization and Intellectual Property Rights: ETSI’s controversial search for new IPR-procedures

During the early 1990s, several international standards development organizations including the IEEE re-approached how they deal with intellectual property rights. The search for new procedures by SDOs is a function of comprehensive institutional and market changes associated with the rapidly evolving ICT field. The changes affect both how formal standardization and how IPRs work in this field. In this note, the changing relationship between SDOs and IPRs will be approached in terms of the protracted controversy that has surrounded ETSI’s attempt to depart from traditional IPR procedures in favor of more detailed ones. This case-study incorporates many of the forces marking the changing ICT-field that contribute to the ‘new environment for standardization’. The study is based on interviews and a study of the theoretic and institutional literature.