European standards for mobile communications: the tense relationship between standards and intellectual property rights

Rudi Bekkers, and Isabelle Liotard

8/26/2015
(Original Publish Date: 1999)

This article starts by discussing the nature of European formal telecommunications standards. A new classification of the different types of standards is proposed, and the institutional framework for formal standards in Europe is described. The next section deals with the relevant property rights. We distinguish the strategies for three different phases in the standardisation process. The next section explains how the institutional field reacted to possible problems of IPRs within telecommunication standard. The subjects of the two final sections, firm strategy and the standardisation bodies' policy, are illustrated in the GSM case.