copyright patents
What is a technical standard from a Copyright law standpoint?
<p>Take for example a technical standard, that covers some communication protocol or any arbitrary mathematical algorithm. It is <em>an idea</em> of some kind. Could this technical standard be patented? Licensed? What is the legal status of such a standard? Could fixing this standard in any tangible form change anything in its patent-ability?</p>

<p>As far as I understand, should somebody implement the aforementioned communication protocol or algorithm in software or hardware, then <em>this implementation</em> becomes a separate entity and could in turn be patented and licensed. Am I correct? Could initial standard somehow prohibit creating such implementations? Could it require a license of some sorts for this?</p>

<p>Copyright and patents are two very very different things. Copyrighting a standard means the wording of the standard can not be copied without the copyright holders permission. It does not protect the ideas expressed in the document, just the way those ideas are expressed. IEEE standards, for example, are copyrighted by the IEEE and therefore you can't make a copy of the Ethernet specification, you need to buy it from them. That has nothing to do with implementing an Ethernet device.</p>

<p>To implement something described in a technical specification might or might not require one or more patent licenses. The authors of the standard may not even be aware that something they require for the standard has already been invented and patented by someone else.</p>

<p>Many standard bodies do impose a requirement on participants in the standard's creation that they offer licenses to any patents they own that are needed to implement the standard on a fair and equal basis to all. It is called FRAND  - the acronym for fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing.</p>
