Standards Development and Innovation: Time to Stop Talking About SEP Licensing

For more than two decades government regulators and self-interested private interests have challenged innovation-enhancing standards development by speculating that licensing of standard essential patents (“SEPs”) allows SEP licensors to leverage supposed market power to extract excessive royalties from SEP licensees and otherwise deter participation in standards development, especially by small and medium sized enterprises (“SMEs”) and startups. To date, empirical proof of such harm is