1. Internet Governance Forum 2006: Open Standards Workshop Susy Struble IT Standardization and Government Policy Sun Microsystems Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License

2. How We Got Here  Basis of IT standardization is in industrialization and its requirement for interoperable systems  Railroads needed standardized time & rail gauges  Commerce needed ways to transfer goods  Users needed reliability for “Industrial Society”  ICT Standardization system built for large, industrial users  Slow and expensive  Allows exchange of IPR through complex cross-licensing  The Golden Age of RAND licensing  Favors wealthy industrialized nations

3. What Has Changed  The Internet and World Wide Web  Increased pace of innovation and change  Participating companies differ wildly in size, composition and background  Ease of use and necessity of using the Web and Internet increases the value of interdependence (the “network” effect)  We need a complete reboot of the global ICT standardization system > Restore ICT to its proper role as an industry enabler > Make ICT standardization a world-wide market unifier and cooperation builder

4. Intellectual Property “Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” Licensing (RAND) > Worked well for steel producers and car makers > Heavy investment of capital, slow return, limited players > Works well when standards are an industrial tool Current ICT standardization arena is troubled by RAND > Too many players, too many patents > Doesn't seem to work well for a Web based world > Little capital investment, fast return, unlimited players > One person's RAND is another's bankruptcy (or barrier to market entry) > No common definition of licensing policies

5. Implementations v. Interfaces Implementations v. Where do you want your patent?

6. Implementations v. Interfaces If you control an interface, you can exclude ALL possible implementations!

7. Two Views: A Well Preserved Record Archiving at its best, with graphics and text, magnificent in its beauty

8. Two Views: A Well Preserved Record Archiving at its worst, with graphics and text that could not be read and understood for centuries because the key to its content was irretrievable Problem is the interface, not the implementation....