An Empirical Examination of Impact

In February 2015, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-Standards Association (IEEE-SA)—one of the largest standards development organizations (SDOs)—adopted highly controversial changes to its intellectual property rights (IPR) policy. It introduced a specific definition of fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms. The aim of this article is to explore how the new patent policy has impacted different aspects of standards development within IEEE. Our analysis focuses on the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802 LMSC), whose Working Groups have been responsible for the design and development of widely used technologies such as Wi-Fi and Ethernet. The empirical findings suggest a decline in Letters of Assurance, with several patent holders reluctant to license under the new FRAND terms. We also find that the number of new projects initiated (or Project Authorization Requests; PARs) in the intellectual property(IP)-intensive IEEE standards (namely the 802 WGs) has recently decreased, suggesting a potential slowdown of the growth rate of innovation after the policy change