Geneva, 29 April 2019
Background
The Royalty Free (RF) Ecma patent policy option has been very successful tool for Ecma since 2013. Most SDOs do not have such a patent policy option and their Patent Policy is solely RAND based. But Ecma can offer both policy options. The choice depends on the concrete standardization area: In certain cases the RAND based policy suites better but in other cases the RF based policy is more useful.
Extension of the Ecma RF
On December 12, 2018 at the 116th Ecma General Assembly in Boston the Ecma RF Patent Policy was extended.
Until then the RF Patent Policy only covered designated Task Groups of a RAND Ecma TC as “Royalty-Free Task Group” (“RFTG”). This has left the option open to operate other TGs within the TC with the traditional RAND patent policy. With the extended policy now entire Ecma TCs can be declared as Royalty Free. This is of advantage in some special standardization areas, like scripting languages, where the market requires all standards to be RF.
As a result of this extension in the early months of 2019 (February-March) TC39 (ECMAScript) and TC53 (Wearables) have become “Royalty Free Technical Committees (RFTCs)”.
For more information: please contact Dr. Istvan Sebestyen, Secretary General of Ecma International. Email: istvan@ecma-international.org.