Diffusion of Collaborative Standards and EU Competition Law

Innovative standards bring about substantial benefits to consumers, such as lower prices, a wider variety of standard-compliant products to choose from and more innovation. Although standardisation is an efficient process, still making sure that the benefits of standardisation are distributed widely remains a challenge. This article is about how the EU competition law has had a significant impact on the development of collaborative standardisation, with a view to ensure that standards are diffused as widely as possible and that consumers internalise a fair share of the value of innovative standards. Arguably EU competition policies in collaborative standardisation have not always been an unqualified success. Yet, the CJEU Huawei ruling has been a positive step forward for EU competition law, successfully striking a fair balance between the interests of various stakeholders and aligning incentives of patent holders and implementers to conduct licensing negotiations in good faith and to refrain from practices that could be characterised opportunistic.