An Empirical Analysis of Development Processes for Anticipatory Standards

There is an evolution in the process used by standards-development organizations (SDOs) and this is changing the prevailing standards development activity (SDA) for information and communications technology (ICT). The process is progressing from traditional SDA modes, typically involving the selection from many candidate, existing alternative components, into the crafting of standards that include a substantial design component (SSDC), or 'anticipatory' standards. SSDC require increasingly important roles from organizational players as well as SDOs. Few theoretical frameworks exist to understand these emerging processes. This project conducted archival analysis of SDO documents for a selected subset of web-services (WS) standards taken from publicly available sources including minutes of meetings, proposals, drafts and recommendations. This working paper provides a deeper understanding of SDAs, the roles played by different organizational participants and the compliance with SDO due process requirements emerging from public policy constraints, recent legislation and standards accreditation requirements. This research is influenced by a recent theoretical framework that suggests viewing the new standards-setting processes as a complex interplay among three forces: sense-making, design, and negotiation (DSN). The DSN model provides the framework for measuring SDO progress and therefore understanding future generations of standards development processes. The empirically grounded results are useful foundation for other SDO modeling efforts

A Model for Semantic IS Standards

We argue that, in order to suggest improvements of any kind to semantic information system (IS) standards, better understanding of the conceptual structure of semantic IS standard is required. This study develops a model for semantic IS standard, based on literature and expert knowledge. The model is validated by case descriptions of two particular semantic IS standards. The model shows characteristics of semantic IS standards. Some of these characteristics might become steering factors for improving the development, adoption and quality of standards, among others

The economics of Information Technologies Standards &

This research investigates the problem of Information Technologies Standards or Recommendations from an economical point of view. In our competitive economy, most enterprises adopted standardization’s processes, following recommendations of specialized Organisations such as ISO (International Organisation for Standardization), W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and ISOC (Internet Society) in order to reassure their customers. But with the development of new and open internet standards, different enterprises from the same sector fields, decided to develop their own IT standards for their activities. So we will hypothesis that the development of a professional IT standard required a network of enterprises but also a financial support, a particular organizational form and a precise activity to describe. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis and understand how professional organise themselves for developing and financing IT standards, we will take the Financial IT Standards as an example. So after a short and general presentation of IT Standards for the financial market, based on XML technologies, we will describe how professional IT standards could be created (nearly 10 professional norms or recommendations appear in the beginning of this century). We will see why these standards are developed outside the classical circles of standardisation organisations, and what could be the “key factors of success” for the best IT standards in Finance. We will use a descriptive and analytical method, in order to evaluate the financial support and to understand these actors’ strategies and the various economical models described behind. Then, we will understand why and how these standards have emerged and been developed. We will conclude this paper with a prospective view on future development of standards and recommendations.information technologies, financial standards, development of standards, evaluation of the economical costs of standards

Exit, voice and loyalty: Strategic behavior in standards development organizations

The protection of intellectual property rights and its limits has spurred controversy in the standardization ecosystem in recent times. While conflicting interests in standard-setting abound over a wide range of pertinent aspects, considerations regarding the inclusion and subsequent treatment of proprietary elements in a technical standard hold the lion’s share of concerns that Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) have to deal with. These concerns revolve around the balance between the interests of innovators and implementers of new technologies. In this respect, SDOs adopt patent policies, which members have to observe in order to participate in SDOs’ activities. Similarly to other rules governing the work of SDOs, patent policies may be modified following the prescribed procedures. However, any subsequent changes to an organization’s operational framework, including its intellectual property rules, may distort prior expectations and lock in members to rules that they never intended to abide by. Against this backdrop, this Article seeks to explore how SDOs’ members respond to the amendments of intellectual property rules by offering a taxonomy of strategies that may be adopted by members opposing modifications based on the exit and voice theory by Hirschman (1970). Drawing upon the example of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) revised Patent Policy, which took effect in 2015, the Article explores how SDO members respond to instances of organizational distress such as an update of intellectual property policies within an SDO, using as proxies stakeholders’ willingness to commit to the new licensing rules and previous examples of strategies when misunderstandings around intellectual property arose. At a normative level, this Article further studies the effect that such changes may have on the nature and structure of a given industry and offers a novel classification of reactions to turning points in the standards development realm, thereby contributing to the currently underdeveloped body of literature on strategic behavior in technological standardization

Balance Requirements for Standards Development Organizations: A Historical, Legal and Institutional Assessment

Most technical standards-development organizations (SDOs) have adopted internal policies embodying “due process” criteria such as openness, balance of interests, consensus decision making and appeals. These requirements arise from numerous sources including antitrust law, international trade law, public procurement requirements and institutional norms. Yet balance criteria lack a generally-accepted definition and the manner in which they are implemented varies, sometimes dramatically, among SDOs. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the principle that SDOs should ensure a balance of interests among their stakeholders, including in the development of intellectual property rights policies. This article explores the origins and meaning of the balance requirement in the U.S. and EU, and identifies distinct legal, administrative and institutional modalities in which balance requirements are imposed, as well as existing antitrust and competition law requirements surrounding SDO balance

Balance and Standardization: Implications for Competition and Antitrust Analysis

Most technical standards development organizations (SDOs) have adopted internal policies embodying “due process” criteria such as openness, balance of interests, consensus decision making, and appeals. Unlike other aspects of SDO governance, relatively little scholarly research has considered the history, scope, and interpretation of SDO balance requirements. Likewise, existing case law and agency guidance offer little assistance in understanding precisely how these balance principles translate into specific antitrust requirements that apply to standards development. Given the absence of specific guidance on the meaning and implications of balance requirements for SDOs under the antitrust laws, it is necessary to review the development of the laws, regulations, and institutional norms that have shaped balance requirements and their application by different SDOs more generally. A series of recent events and disputes, however, has focused attention on this understudied area, particularly as it pertains to policies concerning intellectual property rights (IPRs). In this article, we provide an extensive survey of the evolution of SDO balance requirements. First, we describe the origins and evolution of balance requirements at the international level, leading to their inclusion in WTO and ISO/IEC instruments. We next describe how balance requirements went from a feature of SDOs to an element of rule of reason analysis under U.S. antitrust law, finding their way into related statutes as well. We then chart the parallel path of balance requirements in the EU, from national SDO features to components of EU standardization policy and eventually factors in EU competition law analysis. We conclude by exploring the different notions of balance that have evolved and their application to antitrust analysis

Standards and Related Intellectual Property Issues for Climate Change Technology

Almost every product sold today must conform to standards, whether relating to its design, manufacture, operation, testing, safety, sale or disposal, and sometimes to many of these at once. At their root, standards are no more than written requirements or design features of a product, service or other activity. They can be breathtakingly detailed or disarmingly general, ranging from thousands of pages in length to just a few sentences. Standards are set by a wide range of bodies, from governmental agencies to industry consortia to multinational treaty organizations. Some standards are adopted into local, state or federal legislation and attain the force of law, others remain voluntary, yet are adopted by entire industries. This chapter provides a brief overview of the standards development landscape as it pertains to climate change technologies, also sometimes referred to as clean tech , green tech and sustainability technologies, as well as the critical intellectual property issues that affect standards setting today