Patents on Open Standards
What happens when someone owns patents that are necessary to implement the specification for an open standard? You will recall that the owner of a patent can prevent you from making, using, or selling his or her patented invention regardless of how you learned to do it, even if you invented it yourself subsequently.
If someone owns a patent claim necessary to practice an open standard, you will need a license from the patent owner to practice that standard in your own software. Your freedom to practice the standard in your software is subject to the license terms from the patent owner.
Standards organizations recognize this. That is why they have focused in recent years on designing patent policies that are compatible ...
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