Standards, patents and innovation

Standards are both inputs and outputs in the cumulative innovation process. Significant technologies are standardized to promote modularity, interoperability and widespread reuse. The resulting standards provide a starting point for extending, improving and applying the underlying technology. This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the role of standards in cumulative innovation, with a particular emphasis on studies that exploit data collected from standard setting organization (SSO) intellectual property disclosures. The authors begin by discussing the relationship between standards and intellectual property, and then turn to a series of topics that have been studied using data on disclosed patents. These topics include the role of SSOs in promoting technology diffusion; factors that influence the performance of SSOs; and the relationship between standards, modularity and innovation. The chapter concludes by discussing several promising areas for future research.