Navigating Standards Essential Patents As An SME

Introduction

Technical standards are usually produced by standard development organisations (SDOs), with inputs from industry and technical experts. Large businesses may be involved in the development of standards from an early stage, which may give them an advantage over competitors in developing technology and filing patent applications that are in line with upcoming standards. A patent holder is incentivised to declare patents as essential to a standard to gain access to the market and to generate royalties by licensing patented technologies to any other organisations making use of standardised technology in their products, as discussed below.

The standards development process may start with establishing work streams to address particular issues. Such work streams may be led by professionals with expertise in the relevant technology who work together to agree on solutions to the identified issues (e.g. by selecting between features proposed by different