The purpose of these common guidelines is to provide in simple words practical guidance to the participants in their technical bodies in case patent or other intellectual property rights matters arise.
For the sake of clarity this document refers to “patents”, as most - but not all - IPR issues that CEN and CENELEC technical bodies have to deal with concern patent rights. However, the same implementation principles shall apply to other statutory intellectual property rights based on inventions that may arise, such as utility models or registered semiconductor topographies (see Clause 2, Terms and definitions).
Considering that technical experts are not normally familiar with the complex issue of patent law, the Common Patent Policy for ISO/IEC/ITU endorsed by CEN and CENELEC (hereafter referred to as the “Patent Policy”) was drafted in its operative part as a checklist covering the three different cases which may arise if a deliverable requires licences for patents to be practiced or implemented, fully or partly.
These Guidelines for Implementation of the Common Policy on Patents for CEN and CENELEC (hereafter referred to as the “Guidelines”) are intended to complement, clarify and facilitate the implementation of the Patent Policy, a copy of which can be found in Annex 1 and also on the websites of both organisations.
The CEN and CENELEC Patent Policy requests stakeholders participating in technical Committees, and in particular patent holders, to proceed to early disclosures and identification of patents that may be considered, at the best of their knowledge, to be essential for the future use of the deliverables under development. In doing so, greater efficiency in standards development is possible and potential patent rights problems can be avoided.
CEN and CENELEC are not involved in evaluating patent relevance or essentiality with regard to deliverables, nor to interfere with licensing negotiations, or engage in settling disputes on patents. This is left to the parties concerned.