Making the Rules: The Governance of Standard Development Organisations and their Policies on Intellectual Property Rights

The workshop will discuss how Standard Development Organisations (SDOs) carry out their policy-making.

It explores how policy-making is constrained by applicable law and by the relationships that create a “standardisation ecosystem”.

The workshop is based on the new JRC Science for Policy Report “Making the rules – The Governance of Standard Development Organisations and their Policies on Intellectual Property Rights” (PDF).

The analysis is based on 17 SDO case studies, a survey of SDO stakeholders, an expert workshop, and a comprehensive review of the legal and economic literature.

As far as public authorities are concerned, the report analyses the state of play as a combination of a procedural approach to SDO governance in general, combined with a safe-harbour approach to IPR policy-making in particular, and makes recommendations for development and improvement in that respect.

Registration

To register please e-mail to Paula.GALNARES-RODRIGUEZ@ext.ec.europa.eu

Audience

The workshop is mainly organised for people working working on issues related to standard development and intellectual property in standardisation in

• ICT industry,
• European institutions,
• government, and
• academia.

Participants are welcome to actively contribute to the debate.

Venue

Programme

The authors of the report will present the main lines of the report, followed by comments from academics and stakeholder representatives and an open discussion.

Draft Agenda

09:00 Registration

09:30 Welcome remarks by

• Pēteris Zilgalvis (DG Connect)
• 2 FEBRUARY 2022

  jrc_welcome.pdf

  English

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10:00

by:

• Justus Baron (Northwestern University)
• Jorge Contreras (University of Utah)
• Martin Husovec (Tilburg University)
• Pierre Larouche (Université de Montréal)

10:30 Panel discussion

• Chair: Nikolaus Thumm (Joint Research Centre)
• Knut Blind (Technische Universität Berlin)
• Christian Loyau (European Telecommunications Standards Institute, ETSI)
• Konstantinos Karachalios (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association, IEEE-SA)

11:30 Open discussion with all participants

12:20 Concluding remarks by DG Connect and Joint Research Centre

12:30 End of the workshop

12:30 Hot and cold lunch buffet

Speakers

Justus Baron

Justus Baron is Senior Research Associate in Economics at Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law (USA). His research focuses on the empirical economic analysis of innovation, in particular with respect to standards and Intellectual Property Rights. In addition to publishing research papers in scholarly journals, he has created a database on standardisation used by a large number of scholars, and has authored or contributed to several policy reports for the European Commission. He is a member of the European Commission Expert Group on Standard Essential Patents.

Knut Blind

Prof. Dr. Knut Blind studied economics, political science and psychology at Freiburg University. In the course of his studies he spent one year at Brock University (Canada), where he was awarded a BA. Finally, he took his Diploma in Economics and later his doctoral degree at Freiburg University. Between 1996 and 2010 he joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Karlsruhe, Germany, as a senior researcher and at last as head of the Competence Center "Regulation and Innovation". In April 2006 Knut Blind was appointed Professor of Innovation Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Berlin University of Technology. Between 2008 and 2016 he held also the endowed chair of standardisation at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University. Since April 2010 he is linked to the Fraunhofer Institute of Open Communication Systems in Berlin. In 2012, he initiated both the Berlin Innovation Panel and the German Standardisation Panel. He published several contributions on standardisation and further innovation aspects in refereed journals.

Jorge Contreras

Jorge Contreras is Professor of Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law (USA). His research focuses on intellectual property, standardisation and science policy. Prior to entering academia, he was a partner at a major international law firm practicing transactional intellectual property law in Boston, London and Washington, DC. He has edited six books and published more than one hundred scholarly articles and book chapters, many relating to the law and regulation of technical standardisation.

Martin Husovec

Martin Husovec is Assistant Professor at Tilburg University (Netherlands) and Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School. His work deals with issues of law, innovation and new technologies, and in particular with intellectual property rights. He has authored many articles and books, including Injunctions Against Intermediaries in the European Union (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is a member of the EU Group of Experts for the Observatory on the Online Platform Economy and a former member of the EU Expert Group on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights.

Konstantinos Karachalios

A globally recognized leader in standards development and intellectual property, Dr. Ing. Konstantinos Karachalios is managing director of the IEEE Standards Association and a member of the IEEE Management Council. As managing director, he has been enhancing IEEE efforts in global standards development in strategic emerging technology fields, through technical excellence of staff, expansion of global presence and activities and emphasis on inclusiveness and good governance, including reform of the IEEE standards-related patent policy. As member of the IEEE Management Council, he championed expansion of IEEE influence in key techno-political areas, including consideration of social and ethical implications of technology, according to the IEEE mission to advance technology for humanity. Results have been rapid in coming and profound; IEEE is becoming the place to go for debating and building consensus on issues such as a trustworthy and inclusive Internet and ethics in design of autonomous systems. Before IEEE, Konstantinos played a crucial role in successful French-German cooperation in coordinated research and scenario simulation for large-scale nuclear reactor accidents. And with the European Patent Office, his experience included establishing EPO’s patent academy, the department for delivering technical assistance for developing countries and the public policy department, serving as an envoy to multiple U.N. organizations. Konstantinos earned a Ph.D. in energy engineering (nuclear reactor safety) and masters in mechanical engineering from the University of Stuttgart.

Pierre Larouche

Pierre Larouche is Professor of Innovation and Law at Université de Montréal (Canada), and formerly Professor of Competition Law at Tilburg University (Netherlands). His work bears on economic regulation, and more specifically on the mutual influence of innovation and law in that area. He has published over 60 monographs, articles and scientific contributions, and his writings have been cited by the UK Supreme Court and the Advocate-General to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Christian Loyau

Christian LOYAU a national of France, is the current Director for Legal and Governance of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). He has practiced in law firms in Denmark and France, and has served as an in-house lawyer for Digital Equipment Corporation and Cap Gemini in France. For 12 years Mr. Loyau held the position of Legal Director for International Affairs for the French telecommunications company Matra Communication, and he was involved in the IPR group of ETSI from 1993 to 1996 having drafted the first IPR policy of ETSI. He also served as General Counsel and Secretary of the Board of the French IT company Bull for 14 years. Mr. Loyau graduated from the University of Paris in commercial, corporate and IP law.

Nikolaus Thumm

Nikolaus Thumm is Senior Fellow at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Spain. He is responsible to set up a work-program around issues on standardisation, intellectual property, licensing, open source and counterfeiting. Until 2013 he was Chief Economist of the European Patent Office. Before, he was working as Senior Economic Counselor for the Swiss Federation. He was chairman of the United Nations' Advisory Group on the Protection and Implementation of Intellectual Property Rights for Investment, a private-public partnership group. He has been member of different expert groups with the European Commission, the OECD and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Pēteris Zilgalvis

Pēteris Zilgalvis is the Head of Unit for Digital Innovation and Blockchain in the Digital Single Market Directorate in DG CONNECT and is the Co-Chair of the European Commission FinTech Task Force. He was nominated on the list of CoinDesk’s Most Influential People in Blockchain 2017. He was the Visiting EU Fellow at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford for 2013-14, where he is an Associate of the Political Economy of Financial Markets Programme. From 1997 to 2005, he was Deputy Head of the Bioethics Department of the Council of Europe, in its Directorate General of Legal Affairs. In addition, he has held various positions in the Latvian civil service (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Environment). He was Senior Environmental Law Advisor to the World Bank/Russian Federation Environmental Management Project and was Regional Environmental Specialist for the Baltic Countries at the World Bank. He has been a member of the California State Bar since 1991, completed his J.D. at the University of Southern California, his B.A. in Political Science Cum Laude at UCLA, and the High Potentials Leadership Program at Harvard Business School. A recent publication of his is “The Need for an Innovation Principle in Regulatory Impact Assessment: The Case of Finance and Innovation in Europe” in Policy & Internet.

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Venue

Brussels, BE