Digital SMEs voice their positions at European Parliament hearing on standardisation
Are Standards Essential Patents helping or hindering SMEs? This was the question addressed today by Secretary General Sebastiano Toffaletti in his statement at the European Parliament hearing on “European Standards for the 21st Century”.
Standard Essential Patents (“SEPs”), i.e. the patented technologies that are embedded in standards in an open and accessible way, are a way to promote innovation. On one hand royalties paid by those who use the patented solutions provide an incentive for companies that invest in research for new technologies and want to share them with other companies though standards. This is true not just for big companies with large R&D teams that own huge patent portfolios, but also for SMEs that can get revenues by making their inventions available to all manufacturers worldwide.
Having said this, Mr Toffaletti’s intervention pointed out some important aspects of the patents declarations and licensing negotiations that should be improved in order to make the system better for SMEs. He stressed that the issues he pointed out were particularly relevant for the emerging market of the Internet of Things “If we want a vast deployment of connected devices and services offered by SMEs some improvements will be necessary”.
The details of his presentation can be found here.
