Standards Organizations: The Missing Link in Fixing FRAND Evasion

Standards, common platforms that allow products to work together, offer benefits to society. But standards typically involve patents. And the owner of a patent gains power after its technology is incorporated into the standard, power that it can use to “hold up” an industry that is locked into that standard. Essential to addressing this problem is a patentee’s promise to license on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (“FRAND”) terms. Such a promise is pivotal in fostering broad use