The European Telecommunications Standards Institute has bowed to the stream of invective that descended on its head from US companies over its sweeping proposals to demand full rights to any patents that might be used in standards definitions, and has won over the likes of IBM Corp, AT&T Corp and Motorola Inc to a revised policy under which a company does not have to make a decision about licensing until the Institute identifies a specific patent needed to implement a standard; the owner will then be to asked to agree within three months to grant licences on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms; the new rules also eliminate provisions that would have applied the policy outside Europe and required disputes to be resolved by mandatory arbitration, and removes language US companies said would have hampered their ability to negotiate cross-licensing agreements to gain access to another company’s technology, instead of money, when licensing out patents.
