Public Policy How Intel promotes innovation worldwide
Intel Public Policy Standards Intel actively participates in the standards development process for the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. Standards are essential to Intel’s business and provide important benefits to industry, consumers, and governments worldwide. Background Standards are critical to today’s information technology, communications, and consumer electronics industries. Global supply chains are built upon globally adopted standards. Businesses and consumers choose standards-based products because of important benefits such as interoperability and consistency in quality. Companies like Intel are able to grow when the industry develops successful standards. Standardization in the ICT sector continues to evolve. New organizations are being formed to develop standards on a regular basis. Existing organizations are reevaluating and revising their standards policies and procedures. In particular, policies for managing intellectual property rights (IPR) in standards are being actively addressed in dozens of standards-setting organizations around the world. Industry must play a leading role in guiding and contributing to global standardization efforts. Intel takes an active interest in the standardization process, participating in leading standardization development organizations and consortia around the world. Key Issues Global standards. Global standards are developed in many venues and share certain characteristics. They respond to the needs of global markets and are created through collaborative efforts that have a global reach, are voluntary, and are widely adopted by the marketplace across national borders. These standards are developed by national member-based international standards bodies, as well as consortia groups and other standards-setting organizations that have processes that are consensus-based, transparent, and industry-led with participation open to all materially affected parties. Intel supports global standards by participating in their development and designing them into our products. 1 Key Issues (continued) Voluntary standards. Voluntary standards are developed by stakeholders, including industry, government, and regulatory bodies. The adoption of voluntary standards is optional—and ultimately driven by the marketplace. Governments may choose to make certain standards mandatory by including or referencing them in technical regulations. Such government activity is appropriate only in limited situations and policy-makers should carefully consider the risk of negatively impacting innovation with unnecessary technical regulations. Intel advocates government policies that appropriately limit the use of technical regulations. Standards and IPR. IPR policies must balance the needs of standards developers and implementers. Standards are only successful if developers with valuable technology are encouraged to participate, and implementers find standards sufficiently attractive to use. Intel believes that Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) IPR policies are a good solution for most standards-developing organizations and that allowing voluntary early disclosure of licensing terms can enhance the well-tested RAND IPR policy. However, no one policy works for every business environment, technology, or organization. 2