Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)

The ETSI IPR online database provides public access for information to patents which were declared as being essential or potentially essential, to ETSI and 3GPP standards.

During the proposal or development of a standard, ETSI members must inform the Director General in a timely fashion if they are aware that they hold any patent that might be essential.

Disclosure of Standard Essential Patents (SEP) holders are requested to provide an irrevocable undertaking in writing that they are prepared to grant irrevocable licenses on Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms and conditions.
Prior to making a patent licensing decision and implementing any SEP contained in the ETSI IPR Database, potential licensees shall always contact the declarant.

The Bulk upload feature of the ETSI online database enables users to upload large amounts of SEPs in one file and optimise the time spent on the interface.

The update tool enables users to update their unnormalised SEPs in reflected declarations. This means the patent-related information was not yet available at the time of the disclosure, and declarants are encouraged to update such disclosures when the data becomes available in the European Patent Office (EPO) database.

ETSI standards are publicly available for consultation from the Standards section of the ETSI website.

The ownership of the copyright in standards created by ETSI or any of its committees shall vest in ETSI.
ETSI is responsible for the copyright management having all rights reserved.

The reproduction of parts of ETSI standards and other ETSI material may be allowed provided a request is made using the ETSI Copyright Licence request form.

The copyright authorisation shall never imply a license on any potential SEP.

Where software is included in any element of an ETSI standard, the software owner grants, without monetary compensation an irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and sub-licensable copyright license to prepare derivative works and reproduce, display, distribute and execute the contributed software and derivative work to ETSI, ETSI members and any implementer for limited purposes (see Section 9.2 of the ETSI Directives).

Anti-trust legislation exists to prevent unfair business practices.

ETSI’s position as a recognised European Standards Organisation does not exempt ETSI nor its members, from the application of competition law.

Practical guidelines on how to ensure compliance with relevant laws on antitrust are part of the ETSI Directives.