[A2k] European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) intervention on standards and patents at WIPO SCP 14

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://keionline.org/node/772

European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) intervention on
standards and patents at WIPO SCP 14


Thank you Mr Chairman.

I'm taking the floor today on behalf of ECIS, the European Committee
for Interoperable Systems.

ECIS would like to congratulate you on your election to the chair of
this very important committee. We thank you for your generosity in
giving us an opportunity to speak today. I will be very brief.

ECIS is an international non-profit association of IT companies,
including IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Opera, Oracle and
others.

It focuses on IP issues concerning interoperability and competition.

It has been a WIPO observer for nearly 20 years, but has been less
active in recent years.

The Committee's focus on standards and patents has captured our
attention. This is an extremely important issue, and one on which WIPO
could play a highly constructive role, both in pursuing concrete
measures and in competence-building. The latter is especially
important in the developing world, which is heavily affected by these
issues but not involved in or necessarily aware of the relevant
standardization processes and consequences.

Patents and standards are intended to achieve similar goals: to
encourage innovation and development of new products benefiting
consumers and economic development.

But the interplay between patents and standards is spawning ever
greater problems. For example, failure to disclose patents essential
to standards and excessive royalty demands threaten the viability of
standards and the consumer welfare that can flow from them.

We believe WIPO could play a crucial role in understanding and
devising solutions to these problems, and we encourage this committee
seriously to pursue them.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997