Archive for December, 2010

On Sunday, December 5, 2010, the IEEE Standards Association held their annual Awards Ceremony. The event was again most enjoyable with good friends, esteemed colleagues, good food, musical entertainment, beautiful flower arrangements, and the ever-popular duet of Judy Gorman (IEEE-SA Managing Director) and Mary Lynne Nielsen (Director of the IEEE-SA’s Corporate Program). At the heart of the occasion was, of course, the awards.

I’d like to highlight two of the IEEE-SA awards as they pertain directly to the technical standards work I’ve been involved in – design automation. The first is the Ron Waxman Design Automation Standards Committee Meritorious Service Award. It was presented to Dr. Hal Carter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati. Hal was a founding member of the DASC (along with Ron Waxman) and has contributed broadly to the advancement of electronic design. The gentleman in the photo below are (from left to right) Ron Waxman, Chuck Adams (President of the IEEE-SA), Hal Carter, and Ted Olsen (Chair of the IEEE-SA Awards Committee).

The second award is the IEEE-SA Corporate Award which is given to companies that provide outstanding leadership and contributions to IEEE standards. The big grin is on my face below (that’s Rich Goldman on the left, Yatin Trivedi on the right) because Synopsys received the award! For many years, our employees – past and present – have worked hard to further IEEE standards, and the award belongs to a whole team of people.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the IEEE-SA Corporate Award was also presented to Underwriters Laboratories (you see their logo everywhere) for their commitment to safety standards that affect everyone’s daily lives.

Congratulations to all of this year’s IEEE-SA award recipients and those who helped make them successful!

I’ve decided to create a new series in my blog that gives real world, real time examples of “The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards” in action. As I see activities, successes, and challenges in the standards game that pertain to one of the “commandments”, I’ll point them out. If you come across any good examples, be sure to let me know and I’ll be glad to write about them (and give you credit, of course).

A few weeks ago, an instance of the second commandment – Use Caution When Mixing Patents and Standards – arose as Microsoft filed a lawsuit against Motorola. Microsoft is claiming that Motorola broke its promises to the IEEE-SA and ITU to offer a Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) license to Motorola’s patents that Motorola identified as being related to WLAN and H.264 video compression. Motorola denies the claim and says it licensing is reasonable.

For countless reasons, I won’t make any judgments on which company is right or wrong or the shades of gray in between. However, I do want to emphasize that this suit (among so many others) is the reason why a standards organization’s intellectual property policy is so important. The IP policies of the IEEE-SA and ITU will likely play a key role as this dispute is resolved. As Yatin Trivedi said when he sent me the link to an article about the lawsuit, “Maybe this suit (and its settlement) will give new understanding of the IP policy in standards organizations.”

There are surely high stakes to be won or lost in the Microsoft vs. Motorola suit because the consumer electronic products industry is massive. And the big question is who’s to decide what RAND really is? The answer will be up to the courts.