Response of Cisco Systems and

Research In Motion

to National Science and Technology Council

Committee on Technology, Subcommittee on Standards

Request for Information Regarding 

“Effectiveness of Federal Agency Participation in Standardization”

National Institutes of Science and Technology

Docket Number 0909100442-0563-02

March 7, 2011

Cisco Systems and Research In Motion (“RIM”) submit this response to the Request for 

Information (the “RFI”) issued by the National Science and Technology Council, Committee on 
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Technology, Subcommittee on Standards, on December 8, 2010. Our companies’ response 

focuses on the portion of the RFI that seeks information regarding approaches to handling 

patents that are necessary to implement a standard.1

I. Introduction

Cisco and RIM regularly participate in a variety of standards development activities. 

Both companies are active in a wide range of standards development organizations (SDOs), from 

large, formal SDOs like the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering Standards 

Association (“IEEE-SA”) to numerous informal special interests groups, fora, and consortia, that 

industry participants form to create a technical specification in a focused area, sometimes with 

the goal of subsequent standardization by a formal SDO. 

The range of Cisco’s involvement in standardization spans the range of Cisco’s 

businesses, including: Ethernet, WiFi, Infiniband, and other local area networking standards; 

Internet Protocol, Multi-Protocol Label Switching, and other wide area networking standards; 

standards for the provision of video, voice, and broadband over cable television and telephone 

networks; and wireless air interface standards such as UMTS, LTE, and WiMax. RIM has 

 1

 RFI at 9: 

With respect to intellectual property, the Sub-Committee would like to understand the

approaches you have experienced or found most appropriate for handling patents and/or other

types of intellectual property rights that are necessary to implement a standard. How does the

need for access to intellectual property rights by Federal agencies factor into the use or

development of standards? To what extent, if any, has the development, adoption or use of a

standard, by Federal agencies in this technology sector been affected by holders of intellectual

property? How have such circumstances been addressed? Are there particular obstacles that

either prevent intellectual property owners from obtaining reasonable returns or cause

intellectual property owners to make IP available on terms resulting in unreasonable returns

when their IP is included in the standard? What strategies have been effective in mitigating

risks, if any, associated with hold-up or buyers’ cartels?
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actively participated in the creation of fourth generation wireless air interface standards such as 

Long Term Evolution, as well as WiFi and security standards used to protect data 

communications across wireless networks. On any given day dozens of our companies’

engineers are actively engaged in standards development, including attending meetings, creating 

technical contributions, and directing the work of SDOs as board members, working group 

chairs, or technical editors. 

Both of our companies also actively patent innovations we create, including innovations 

that each company contributes for inclusion in standards. The IEEE Spectrum’s 2010 Patent 

Power Scorecard ranked Cisco’s patent portfolio as the best in the telecommunications industry.

2

 

Cisco innovations in the areas such as routing, multi-protocol label switching, security, and 

quality of service have been critical to the development of the internet and the ability of data 

networks to carry voice and video. Cisco has also played a leading role in the development of 

multiple generations of the DOCSIS standard that is used to transmit data over cable networks, 

the standard most households in the United States that receive broadband use to access the 

internet. Like Cisco, RIM is recognized as a leading innovator. The IEEE Spectrum’s 2010 

Patent Power Scorecard ranked RIM’s patent portfolio Number 5 in telecommunications 

services.3

 2

 RIM’s BlackBerry products, first introduced in 1999, reflect groundbreaking 

innovation leading to the creation of devices that are technically sophisticated, secure, and easy 

to use. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server, a software product that enterprises deploy to provide 

their employees with remote access to e-mail, is a scalable database capable of supporting the 

http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/patentpower2010. IEEE Spectrum assigned Cisco’s patent portfolio a power 

score of 724, over ten percent higher than the second place company.

3 http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/patentpower2010. .
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remote messaging demands of even the largest enterprise customers while integrating with 

leading e-mail products. 

Both of our companies regularly implement standards in our products. Cisco is the

industry leader in Ethernet switching products which implement the IEEE-SA’s 802.1 and 802.3 

family of local area networking standards. Cisco is also the leading developer of home and 

business wireless local area networking products that implement IEEE-SA’s 802.11 family of 

wireless LAN standards. And it is a leader in the development of routers, which implement a 

large number of standards created by the Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”) the 

International Telecommunications Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (“ITU-T”), 

and other SDOs. Cisco also implements IETF and IEEE-SA standards in internet telephony 

products, ITU-T video compression standards in videoconferencing products, and CableLabs 

standards in cable set-top boxes, routers, and home networking products, to name just a few 

examples. Indeed, many Cisco products implement dozens of different standards created by 

dozens of standards development organizations.

RIM’s mobile communication devices, including the BlackBerry family of smartphones.

implement numerous wireless air interface standards developed by standards development 

organizations such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, the Third 

Generation Platform Project, the Telecommunications Industry Association, IEEE-SA, and the 

Bluetooth Special Interest Group. RIM’s customers increasingly use their BlackBerrys to take 

and send still and video images, requiring the devices to support compression standards such as 

the MPEG and JPEG standards. BlackBerrys also implement a variety of voice compression and 

security standards. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server implements a range of e-mail standards as 

well as database standards.
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II. OMB A-119 and the Changing Patent Landscape

In the 1990s, the US Government announced a policy favoring federal agency adoption

of voluntary consensus standards rather than government-specific standards. The new policy 

was the result of the enactment in March 1996 of the National Technology Transfer Act, 

(“NTTAA”) which directed federal agencies to use “technical standards that are developed or 

adopted by voluntary consensus standards bodies”.4 The term “voluntary consensus standards 

bodies” in the NTTAA contrasted with standards developed specifically for government use, 

which had predominated prior to the NTTAA.5 In passing the NTTAA, “[t]he objective [was] 

for Federal agencies to adopt private sector standards, wherever possible, in lieu of creating 

proprietary, non-consensus standards.”6

 The intent to substitute “voluntary consensus 

standards” for government-developed standards whenever possible was described further in an 

implementing regulation issued by the Office of Management and Budget, OMB Circular A119, last revised in March 1998. 

 4 Pub. L. No. 104-113, § 12(d)(1).

5

 In describing the purposes of the NTTAA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology notes that:

“Among other things, the NTTAA directs NIST to bring together federal agencies as well as state and local 

governments to achieve greater reliance on voluntary standards and decreased dependence on in-house 

standards. To illustrate, when government agencies discovered a need for a standard, they had, in the past, 

created and adopted unique, proprietary standards when voluntary consensus standards already existed that 

effectively addressed those needs. The result was an unnecessary government standard that created confusion 

and added expense for those who had to comply with it.” 

http://gsi.nist.gov/global/index.cfm/L1-3/L2-6/A-166

6 “National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act”, http://gsi.nist.gov/global/index.cfm/L1-3/L2-6/A-166
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A. The Meaning of “Voluntary Consensus Standard”

In implementing the NTTAA, OMB Circular A-119 provided additional meaning to the 

term “voluntary consensus standard” by identifying a number of procedural attributes that must 

characterize the creation of a standard to merit federal adoption.7

In the thirteen years since the OMB Circular A-119 was last revised, two significant 

changes have emerged in standards development. We believe that these changes substantiate 

the pressing need to revise the Circular to adapt it to today’s realities in both standards 

development and the patent system.

The procedural attributes

identified vary in specificity. With respect to intellectual property rights, the Circular requires 

that a standard be created under rules “requiring that owners of relevant intellectual property 

have agreed to make that intellectual property available on a non-discriminatory, royalty-free or 

reasonable royalty basis to all interested parties.” However, the other attributes that must 

characterize the standards development process for federal adoption to occur are defined less 

precisely, for example the requirements of openness and balance of interest.

 7 OMB Circular A-119 at § 4(a)(1): 

A voluntary consensus standards body is defined by the following attributes: 

(i) Openness. 

(ii) Balance of interest. 

(iii) Due process. 

(vi) An appeals process. 

(v) Consensus, which is defined as general agreement, but not necessarily unanimity, and includes a process for 

attempting to resolve objections by interested parties, as long as all comments have been fairly considered, each 

objector is advised of the disposition of his or her objection(s) and the reasons why, and the consensus body 

members are given an opportunity to change their votes after reviewing the comments. 
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The first change is the increasing importance of informal standards development 

organizations, which have created standards which enjoy widespread adoption, including by 

federal agencies. However, informal SDOs do not necessarily provide each of the attributes 

mandated by the Circular. The second change is the new patent landscape, which calls into 

question the value of OMB Circular A-119’s reliance on the availability of licenses on 

reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (“RAND”) to protect federal agencies that adopt

voluntary consensus standards.

The impact of the first change can be seen through examples of widely-used standards 

created by informal standards development organizations (“SDOs”). It is safe to say that every 

personal computer purchased by the US Government in the past five years has contained USB 

ports. The USB standard is created by the USB Implementers Forum, an SDO which does not 

provide the appeals process mandated by the Circular. Neither does the World Wide Web 

Consortium (“W3C”), which creates the XML and Cascading Style Sheet standards that are 

implemented in numerous websites, including websites maintained by US government agencies.

And neither does the Bluetooth SIG, responsible for the familiar Bluetooth personal area 

networking standard.

The Bluetooth SIG also requires all participants to license patents they own that are 

necessary to implement the Bluetooth standard on royalty-free (“RF”) terms.8

 8 See Bluetooth SIG Patent and Copyright License Agreement, available at 

 W3C’s 

intellectual property rights policy promotes royalty-free licensing as the organization’s default 

licensing mode and permits licensing on royalty-bearing, but reasonable and non-discriminatory 

https://www.bluetooth.org/Membership/agreements.htm .
- 8 -

terms only in exceptional circumstances.9

More generally, terms like “openness” and “balance” used in OMB Circular A-119 are 

susceptible to different interpretations, raising questions about what rules an SDO must put in 

place to satisfy the Circular’s requirements. We believe that the terms “openness” and 

“balance” must be understood to allow interested stakeholders in the market affected by the 

standard to take part in choosing and elaborating the standard. Nevertheless, what that means 

becomes less clear when applied to specific situations SDOs sometimes face. For example, 

while an SDO may be open to participation by the general public, it may support itself by 

charging participants fees to join, and those fees may effectively limit participation to industry 

participants rather than consumers. Does this mean that the standards created by such an SDO

fails the Circular’s requirement of openness? Likewise, an SDO may have both members that 

are primarily technology licensors and companies that are primarily implementers of a standard. 

The SDO may include companies that develop products at different levels of a supply chain, for 

 To the extent that OMB Circular A-119’s reference 

to the availability of intellectual property “on a non-discriminatory, royalty-free or reasonable 

royalty basis” is read to require that a voluntary consensus standard body must permit both 

royalty free (“RF”) and royalty-bearing but reasonable and non-discriminatory (“RAND”) 

licensing of essential patents, Bluetooth would not qualify under OMB Circular A-119 as a 

voluntary consensus standard, and the W3C’s preference for royalty-free licensing might call

into question the status of XML and CSS as well. The ambiguity in the Circular regarding 

whether participants in the development of a voluntary consensus standard must be able to 

choose between offering RF and RAND licenses may discourage federal implementation of 

standards created by open source development efforts. 

 9 The relevant provisions of the W3C IPR policy are available at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy20040205/Overview.html#sec-Exclusion. 
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example semiconductor vendors, device vendors, and customers. However, the companies that 

choose to participate in the creation of a particular standard may be drawn predominantly from 

one group of companies or another. Does this mean that the standard in question suffers from a 

lack of balance?

Given both the potential for non-compliance by informal SDOs with all of the attributes 

identified in the Circular, and the ambiguity of some of those attributes, the time has come for a 

reexamination of the definition of “voluntary consensus standard”. In undertaking that 

reexamination, the US Government should recognize that the market has spoken: standards 

created under attributes that may not comply with every one of the OMB Circular A-119 

attributes have enjoyed widespread adoption, including by US Government agencies. That 

suggests that a list of attributes that excludes an appeals process, that explicitly permits 

mandatory or default RF standards to qualify as “voluntary consensus standards,” and that 

provides SDOs with additional guidance as to how they can satisfy the requirements of 

openness and balance would conform the Circular to the reality of standards development in 

2011. 

B. The Circular’s Reliance on RAND as a Safeguard for Federal Adoption

The second way in which the world of standards development as it existed in 1998 has 

changed dramatically relates to the interface between standards development and intellectual 

property rights. In the thirteen years since the last revision to OMB Circular A-119:

• what has been described as the “patent thicket”, the proliferation of intellectual 

property rights in industries like telecommunications, computing, and 
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semiconductors operate, has grown ever more dense as more and more patent 

applications are filed;

• the products that technology companies make have become more complex and 

multi-functional, as what were once separate products converge; and

• the patent marketplace has become more liquid, with the emergence of nonpracticing entities (NPEs) as significant owners and asserters of patents, including 

patents claimed to be essential to implement standards;

The implications of these developments for the standards development system are 

profound and inter-related: the patent thicket in information technology means that the 

implementation of even a single standard may require licenses to dozens or hundreds of patents 

owned by numerous licensors. For example, the IEEE-SA website identifies over 100 issued 

US patents that are claimed to be essential to implement the 802.11 WiFi standard, owned by 

dozens of different entities.10 According to research by Professor Timothy Simcoe, in 1998, 

when OMB Circular A-119 was last revised, there were 87 patent disclosures made to a set of 

nine prominent standards development organizations active in the telecommunications 

industry.

11

 10

 By 2003 that number had more than tripled, to 194 disclosures, before falling back 

http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/patcom/pat802_11.html. The total number of patents claimed to be 

essential to the 802.11 family of standards is likely to be significantly higher, as many of the letters of assurance 

filed with the IEEE-SA do not identify specific standards, but instead offer a blanket commitment to license all 

patents that may be essential to implement an 802.11 standard. Nor is WiFi an isolated example. A study of 

UMTS, one of the two 3G wireless air interface standards implemented in the United States (by AT&T and TMobile), estimates that there are over 700 patents, owned by 33 different companies, that are required to 

implement UMTS. PA Consulting, Essential Intellectual Property in 3GPP-FDD (2006) at 17.

11 The SDOs Professor Simcoe examined were American National Standards Institute (ANSI), ATM Forum, 

Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), European Telecommunications Standards

Institute (ETSI), IEEE-SA, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), International Telecommunications Union 

(ITU), Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA).
- 11 -

to 125 in 2004.12 Professor Stuart Graham, now the Chief Economist at the US Patent and 

Trademark Office, has noted that patents disclosed to SDOs are much more likely to be asserted 

in litigation than other patents.13

The emergence of multi-functional products means that common consumer information 

technology products, for example smartphones or notebook computers, may implement dozens 

or hundreds of standards. A recent article estimates that a notebook computer implements no 

fewer than 251 interoperability standards. 14

And the rise of non-practicing entities (“NPEs”), companies that typically acquire patents 

solely to assert them and obtain royalties, as active purchasers and asserters of patents means 

that the ownership of patents essential to implement particular standards may become even 

more dispersed, and that a significant number of patents essential to implement standards will 

be owned by entities that are motivated solely by the desire to monetize patents they have 

 A smartphone may implement several wireless air 

interface standards such as UMTS and GSM, WiFi for communication with short-range 

wireless hotspots, and audio, image, and video compression standards such as G.711 or AAC, 

JPEG, and MPEG-4. 

 12 Timothy Simcoe, Explaining the Increase in Intellectual Property Disclosure, at 2. Article available at 

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1396332. 

13 Stuart Graham, Patents and Technology Markets: How is the market operating, and can it be improved?, 

presented at Federal Trade Commission Hearings on The Evolving IP Marketplace, slide 7 (presented April 17, 

2010), available at http://www.ftc.gov/bc/workshops/ipmarketplace/apr17/docs/sgraham.pdf. 

Professor Simcoe cites research by Stuart Graham showing that patents declared to standards development 

organizations are ten times more likely to be asserted in litigation than patents generally. Simcoe, Explaining 

the Increase, supra n. 12, at 4. Professor Simcoe notes that “[i]t is important to be careful with this statistic, 

since the causality could easily run in both directions. That is, disclosure may increase the probability of 

litigation, and patents that are likely to be litigated may also be more likely to get disclosed. In either case, these 

litigation rates ... show that ‘SSO patents’ have a great deal of economic and/or technological significance.”

14 See Brad Biddle, Andrew White, and Sean Woods, How Many Standards in a Laptop? (And Other Empirical 

Questions) (September 10, 2010) (identifying 251 interoperability standards implemented in a laptop computer). 

Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1619440. 
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acquired. Companies that implement standards in the products they sell are likely to be both 

licensors and licensees of patents that are essential to implement standards and are subject to 

RAND licensing commitments. Being both a licensor and a licensee tends to moderate the 

positions practicing entities take as to what royalties they can seek from potential licensees, 

because the positions practicing entities take as to what a “reasonable” royalty is when they are 

licensors can be used against them when they are themselves prospective licensees. NPEs, by 

contrast, are never licensees, and therefore have no incentive to moderate their views as to what 

royalties are reasonable. And patent assertions by NPEs are increasing. In 1998, the year the 

Circular was last revised, there were approximately 60 patent assertions by NPEs. In 2010 there 

were over 400.

15

In requiring that federal agencies adopt only standards for which licenses to required 

patents were available on RAND terms, the drafters of OMB Circular A-119 assumed that the 

availability of RAND licenses would protect federal adopters from the risk of opportunistic 

behavior by owners of essential patents. This is, indeed, the function that RAND licensing is

intended to serve. However, in the patent system as it exists today, RAND has not consistently 

proven to be a meaningful constraint on the hold-up value that patents that are essential to 

implement widely-adopted standards can attain. Instead, ubiquitous standards such as 802.11 

and the UMTS standard for third-generation wireless have been plagued by disputes and 

lawsuits between implementers and companies claiming to own essential patents regarding 

whether particular licensing terms do or do not comply with RAND.16

 15 See 

 Given the lack of 

https://www.patentfreedom.com/research-lot.html. 

16 E.g., Broadcom Corp. v. Qualcomm, Inc., 501 F.3d 297 (3d Cir. 2007); Research in Motion Ltd. v. Motorola 

Inc., 644 F.Supp. 2d 788 (N.D. Tex. 2008); Ericsson, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Civ. A. No. 06-63 

(E.D. Tex. Apr. 20, 2007); Apple Inc. v. Nokia Corp., C.A. No. 09-1002 (D. Del., filed February 24, 2010); 
- 13 -

consensus in industry on what limits RAND imposes on the ability of a party claiming to own 

essential patents, the fact that patents needed to implement a standard are available on RAND 

terms provides federal agencies with little visibility into future licensing costs that they will 

face, either directly or included in the prices they pay when they purchase products that 

implement standards. 

This lack of visibility impacts the federal role in standards development in three ways. 

First, as a purchaser of products that implement standards, the US Government, in common 

with other purchasers of products that implement the same standards, is exposed to paying more 

for those products because the prices vendors charge reflect royalty payments they make to 

numerous owners of essential patents, payments that RAND licensing commitments do little to 

constrain. Certainly some royalties paid to owners of essential patents fairly reflect the value of 

the licensed technology, but others reflect nothing more than the negotiating power that comes 

to the owner of a patent essential to implement a widely-adopted standard, regardless of 

whether the technology described in the patent is superior to other alternatives that existed at the 

time of standardization. 

Second, the US Government sometimes views the creation of standards as necessary to 

attain a federal policy goal. Current examples are SmartGrid and eHealth. The lack of 

predictability that industry participants face regarding licensing costs discourages them from 

implementing standards because they have no way of knowing whether, if they implement the 

standards being created with government encouragement in the products they sell, they will then 

be able to sell those products at a price that will cover their costs, including licensing expenses. 

 

Microsoft Corp. v. Motorola Inc., No. 2:10-cv-01823 (W.D. Wash., filed Nov. 9, 2010); Intersil Corp. v. 

Proxim, Inc., Civ. No. 01-266 (D. Del. filed April 24, 2001).
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This is why efforts to understand the intellectual property regimes underlying complex families 

of standards, such as the catalog of standards NIST has identified as relevant to SmartGrid,

17

Third, opportunistic behavior involving patents that are essential to implement widelyadopted standards may harm consumer welfare by exposing US consumers to paying higher 

prices for widely-used products such as cell phones, smartphones, wireless access points, 

computers, and software. Carl Shapiro, now Chief Economist of the Antitrust Division, and 

Joseph Farrell, now Chief Economist of the Federal Trade Commission, highlighted this 

concern in an article they co-authored several years ago, writing that “standards hold-up is a 

public policy concern because downstream consumers are harmed when excessive royalties are 

passed on to them.”

are 

so important: more information about future licensing terms will increase the interest of 

equipment suppliers and utilities in implementing the standards that the creation of a smart grid 

will require.

18 The federal government has a critical role to play in policing the 

standards development system to sanction opportunistic behavior in standards development, and 

in encouraging SDOs to adopt IPR policies that mitigate the risk of opportunistic behavior. 

 17 See NIST Special Publication 1108, “NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability 

Standards,Release 1.0”, available at 

http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/upload/smartgrid_interoperability_final.pdf. 

18 Joseph Farrell, John Hayes, Carl Shapiro, and Theresa Sullivan, Standard-Setting, Patents, and Hold-Up, 74 

ANTITRUST LAW JOURNAL 600, 608 (2007). As the Federal Trade Commission noted when announcing its 

settlement with Negotiated Data Solutions in January 2008, the Commission acted “to protect consumers from 

higher prices and ensure competition by preventing [N-Data] from charging higher royalties for the 

technologies used in the standard.” In the Matter of Negotiated Data Solutions, FTC Press Release (January 23, 

2008) (available at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/01/ethernet.shtm). 
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III. The New Patent Landscape and the Federal Role in Standards Development

Given the changes in the patent landscape since OMB Circular A-119 was last revised in 

1998, we submit that it is time for the federal government to revise the Circular to protect federal 

interests both as an adopter of standards and as a promoter of the development of standards in 

support of initiatives like eHealth and SmartGrid. Specifically, the federal government should 

make clear, first, that the reference to RAND in the Circular should be the minimum that federal 

agencies should require before they choose to adopt a standard, and, second, that federal 

agencies are encouraged to include intellectual property-based considerations in their selection of 

particular standards for federal adoption, including whether the standards were created using IPR 

policies that provide the agencies, and the vendors from which they purchase products that 

implement standards, with predictable IPR licensing terms. 

A. SDO Rules That Encourage or Require Participants to State Licensing Terms

To pick one example, the federal government should revise the Circular to announce a 

federal preference for standards created under rules that permit, encourage or require participants 

in standards development to state their maximum licensing terms during the standards 

development process, as is true at both the IEEE-SA and the VME Bus International Trade 

Association (“VITA”).19

 19 The IEEE-SA and VITA policies permitting or mandating disclosure of “not-to–exceed” licensing terms were 

the subject of Business Review Letters issued by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. See Letter, 

Thomas O. Barnett to Robert A. Skitol (October 30, 2006) (VITA) (available at 

 The two federal agencies charged with enforcing federal antitrust laws, 

the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, have taken 

the clear position that disclosure of licensing terms during the standards development process 

http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/busreview/219380.htm) and Letter, Thomas O. Barnett to Michael A. Lindsay 

(April 30, 2007) (IEEE-SA) (available at http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/busreview/222978.htm). 
- 16 -

“could help mitigate hold up that is not resolved in the first instance by the existence of SSO 

rules requiring disclosure of IP or by requirements that SSO members license on RAND

terms”.

20

The advantages of a federal policy favoring adoption of standards developed with the 

benefit of specific information regarding licensing terms extend beyond the interest that the 

government has – particularly at a time when agency budgets are stretched thin – in being able to 

predict licensing expenses associated with the implementation of a particular standard. As noted 

previously, the lack of consensus regarding what RAND means leaves prospective implementers 

of standards uncertain regarding licensing costs and terms. Standardization in “patent thicket” 

industries like computing and telecommunications often comes down to selecting one technology 

that is protected by patents from among a number of close substitutes that are also patented. 

Without knowing what licensing terms are associated with the various choices, participants and 

implementers cannot predict the cost of implementation, and this uncertainty discourages 

adoption of standards. SDO rules that encourage or require participants to state maximum 

licensing terms:

may place an upper bound on a patent holder’s RAND commitment, and [ ] lower[] the 

risk that users of a standard will face demands for more restrictive licensing terms after 

the standard is set than SSO members expected when they chose to include the

patented technology in the standard. Reducing this risk may speed adoption of the 

standard in the marketplace.21

A federal preference for agency adoption of standards created under rules that provide 

participants and implementers with more information about licensing terms than they typically 

 20 US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, Antitrust Enforcement and Intellectual Property 

Rights: Promoting Innovation and Competition (2007) at 53 (available at 

http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/hearings/ip/222655.pdf). 

21 Ibid.
- 17 -

receive under current, RAND-based, rules could thus encourage implementation of standards 

that are critical to the realization of federal policy initiatives like electronic health records and 

SmartGrid. 

B. SDO Rules That Measure the “Reasonable” Element of RAND by the Inventive 

Contribution a Patent Makes to a Standard 

In addition to encouraging federal adoption of standards created under rules that provide 

implementers with meaningful information regarding licensing terms, OMB Circular A-119 

should be revised to encourage adoption of standards created under intellectual property rights 

policies that may retain the use of RAND, but that define the “reasonable” element to focus on 

the contribution made by the particular patents to the value of the device in which it is 

implemented, rather than on the value of the entire device. This approach to defining the “R” 

element of RAND is consistent with recent cases on the calculation of a reasonable royalty by 

courts deciding patent infringement cases outside the context of essential patents.

22

With respect to patents essential to implement standards, the determination of what 

royalties are “reasonable” should also include a consideration of the alternatives that were 

available to the participants in the standards development process at the time they decided to 

include the patented technology in a proposed standard. Some patents describe technology that 

 Those cases 

teach that the calculation of a reasonable royalty should not be based on the value of the entire 

device that implements an essential patent, but rather on the incremental demand for the product 

created by the inclusion of the invention claimed in the patent.

 22 See, e.g.,Uniloc USA, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., Fed. Cir. (Jan. 4, 2011); Lucent Technologies, Inc. v. Gateway, 

Inc., 580 F.3d 1301, 1337 (reducing damage award where patentee failed to show that claimed invention was 

“the basis – or even a substantial basis – of consumer demand for [the infringing product]”); Cornell Univ. v. 

Hewlett-Packard Co., 609 F. Supp. 2d 279, 289 (N.D.N.Y. 2009) (reducing amount of damages awarded by 

jury where patentee “fail[ed] to connect consumer demand” for the infringing product to the claimed invention).
- 18 -

is so fundamental that the functionality the standard provides could not, as a practical matter, 

have been provided without infringing the patent. Other patents, however, may describe one of 

several equally attractive technologies that were available at the time a standard was being 

developed. But after a standard is finalized and widely adopted, both groups of patents are 

equally essential to an implementer of the standard. Measuring valuation by the inventive 

contribution a patent made to a standard at the time the patented technology was selected for 

inclusion will help isolate truly innovative contributions from those that derive their value 

mainly from the fact that they were selected for inclusion over equally worthy alternatives. 

Thus, far from discouraging innovation, IPR policies that define what “reasonable” means will 

help isolate those innovations that truly advance the state of the art and secure for their inventors 

a fair reward.

C. SDO Rules that Require Participants to Identify Patents They Refuse to License

Federal adoption of standards will also benefit from other safeguards intended to protect 

implementers of standards from the risk of opportunistic behavior in standards development. 

One safeguard involves patent disclosure. It is common for standards development organizations 

to have intellectual property rights policies that require participants to disclose patents (often 

including published patent applications) they own that may be essential to implement a standard 

under development. However, particularly for larger companies, compliance with disclosure 

obligations can be difficult because their patent portfolios may, as a practical matter, be too large 

for any person who attends standards development meetings or otherwise engages in standards 

development to be aware of all patents that might be related to a standard under development. 
- 19 -

For this reason, many SDOs disclaim any obligation on participants to search their portfolios to 

identify potentially essential patents. 

One way many SDOs, particularly informal SDOs, have responded to the potential 

uncertainty regarding the patent positions owned by participants in standards development is to 

adopt negative declaration systems, in which each participant is obligated to identify patents that 

individuals participating on its behalf are aware of that it believes will be essential to implement 

a standard, and to identify all patents that it refuses to license. The default rule is that the 

participant is willing to license all patents in its portfolio that it does not exclude. This type of

intellectual property rights policy has the advantages of bringing potentially essential patents that 

individuals engaged in a standards development effort are aware of to the attention of the other 

participants while applying licensing obligations to all patents owned by a participant except 

those it specifically excludes from the scope of its licensing commitment. Such policies provide 

additional certainty to participants that patents that are essential to implement a standard will be 

available for license, whether or not the participant was unaware at the time of its participation 

that its patent could be essential. Consistent with revising OMB Circular A-119 to give federal 

adopters greater assurance that essential patents will be available for license, changes to the 

Circular that encouraged federal adopters to select standards created using negative declarations 

would be a positive step.

D. SDO Rules That Apply Licensing Commitments to Purchasers of Essential Patents

As noted previously, a significant new development that has occurred since OMB 

Circular A-119 was last revised in 1998 is the emergence of a liquid market for patents, 

including patents essential to implement standards. This has led to disputes regarding whether 
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purchasers of essential patents are required to honor licensing commitments made by previous 

owners of those patents to standards development organizations.23 While judicial resolutions of 

these disputes have supported the view that a purchaser of patents that has notice of a licensing 

commitment given by the seller to a standards development organization is bound by that 

commitment, it would benefit the goal of certainty with respect to the availability of licensing 

commitments if OMB Circular A-119 were revised to announce a federal policy favoring

adoption of standards created under IPR policies that require transferees of essential patents to be 

bound by licensing commitments given by their predecessors in interest.24

E. SDO Rules That Prohibit Participants in Standards Development That Have Made 

Licensing Commitments From Seeking to Enjoin Implementation of Standards 

Participants in standards development commit to license patents that are essential to 

implement a standard to implementers of that standard. In doing so, the participating patent 

owners surrender the right to exclude that is the core of the patent right.25

 23 E.g., Rembrandt Technologies L.P. v. Harris Corp., Delaware Superior Court (Oct. 31, 2008) (available at 

 They commit to grant 

http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?ID=113670). See generally the Analysis of Proposed 

Consent Order to Aid Public Comment filed by the Federal Trade Commission in In the Matter of Negotiated 

Data Solutions (Jan. 23, 2008) (available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0510094/080122analysis.pdf). 

24 We note in this regard that in announcing a set of suggested IPR policy provisions that standards development 

organizations wishing to avail themselves of a safe harbor with respect to the application of European 

Commission competition law, the Directorate General of Competition, the European Commission’s antitrust 

enforcement agency, included a rule requiring that licensing commitments transfer with essential patents. 

Guidelines on the Applicability of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to 

Horizontal Co-operation Agreements at ¶ 285 (January 14, 2011) (“To ensure the effectiveness of the FRAND 

commitment, there would also need to be a requirement on all participating IPR holders who provide such a 

commitment to ensure that any company to which the IPR owner transfers its IPR (including the right to license 

that IPR) is bound by that commitment, for example through a contractual clause between buyer and seller.”)

(available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2011:011:0001:0072:EN:PDF).

25 See Mark Lemley, Intellectual Property Rights and Standard Setting Organizations (2002) at 57 (“If a patent 

owner agrees to license its patents that cover a standard on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, others will 

assume that they are free to use that standard so long as they pay a reasonable royalty. There may be no express 

license between the patent owner and any of the users of the standard, but it seems perfectly reasonable to imply 
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licenses, subject to agreement on specific licensing terms. Nevertheless, US courts have 

permitted owners of essential patents to seek to enjoin implementers of standards from 

continuing to infringe.26

Put simply, a patentee that has participated in the development of a standard and 

committed to license essential patents, but then seeks to enjoin use of its patent to implement that 

standard, acts contrary to the raison d’etre of requiring licensing commitments in SDO IPR 

policies. Permitting owners of essential patents to seek to enjoin the use of those patents

provides them with significant bargaining power in pre-litigation negotiations over licensing 

terms.

 

27

We propose revising OMB A-119 to favor federal adoption of standards created by SDOs 

clarifying that a RAND or RF licensing commitment prohibits participants from seeking to 

 It is often impossible to design around patents that are truly essential to implement a 

standard without losing interoperability with other devices. For example, while there may be 

dozens or hundreds of patents that are required to implement a wireless air interface standard, the 

inability to implement any one of them may prevent a cell phone from communicating with a 

base station, destroying the value of the phone. Faced with the prospect of shutting down their 

businesses, implementers of standards are powerfully motivated to avoid the risk of injunctions 

in disputes with those claiming to own essential patents. And, as previously discussed, the lack 

of consensus regarding what RAND means permits those patentees to exploit fully the 

bargaining power that the injunction threat provides.

 

one from the conduct of the patent owner.”) (available at 

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=310122). 

26 E.g., Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation v. Buffalo Technology, Inc., 492 F. Supp. 

2d 600 (E.D. Tex. 2007), reversed on other grounds, 542 F.3d 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

27 See Farrell, Hayes, et al., Standard Setting, Patents, and Hold-Up, supra n. 18, at 616-618. On the more 

general effect of the injunction threat on the negotiation of patent licensing royalties, see Carl Shapiro, 

Injunctions, Hold-Up, and Patent Royalties (available at http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/royalties.pdf). 
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enjoin implementers of standards, at least until an objective third party such as a court or 

arbitrator has determined that the patentee has offered to license on reasonable terms.28 Taking 

this step would help protect federal agencies from the hold-up risks created by the injunction 

threat, and would assure continuity of supply of products federal agencies purchase. Favoring 

standards created by SDOs that discourage or prohibit the use of injunctions would also remove 

a concern that industry participants may have as they consider whether to implement standards 

that are important to the realization of federal policy goals. 

IV. Conclusion 

The RFI asks whether issues regarding intellectual property rights necessary for 

implementation of a standard have affected federal development, adoption or use of standards. 

We believe the answer to that question is “yes”. First, the lack of consensus among industry 

participants as to what RAND means exposes federal implementers of standards to over-paying 

for products that implement standards because companies that develop those products are 

themselves exposed to opportunistic behavior by owners of patents claimed to be essential to 

implement standards. Second, the reliance on RAND in OMB Circular A-119 and SDO 

intellectual property rights policies, without the additional safeguards discussed in this 

Comment, may discourage industry participation in the creation of standards in areas where the 

creation of standards is necessary to the achievement of federal policy goals.

Fortunately, the federal government has the tools to support improvements in standards 

development that can address both challenges. By updating OMB Circular A-119 to reflect the 

 28 Cisco and RIM take no position as to the availability of injunctive relief in the context of the defensive assertion 

of an essential patent in response to the actual or threatened assertion of a patent that is not claimed to be 

essential to the same standard. Cisco and RIM also take no position as to whether an SDO’s IPR policy may 

include broader defensive suspension or termination provisions. 
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current patent and standards development environments, the federal government will facilitate 

federal adoption of standards developed under rules that provide agencies with greater visibility 

into licensing terms and costs. Revising the Circular to favor transparency in standards 

development will both limit the future diversion of scarce federal resources to those who engage 

in opportunistic behavior in standards development and encourage industry to support the 

adoption of standards in support of critical government priorities.