Article 1   IPEC highly values and respects the legitimate interests of owners of intellectual property rights, encourages the establishment of an open, transparent and foreseeable intellectual property environment, and promotes the standardization and industrialization in relevant fields.

Article 2  IPEC has no objection in principle to the adoption of technical solutions protected by patent rights in the IPEC specifications. However, IPEC will consider from a technical perspective the necessity and reasonableness of the patented technology in the IPEC specifications and potential impact of the patented technology on application of corresponding standards in the industry.

Article 3   During implementation of the IPEC specifications, IPEC shall not engage in any patent licensing activities. Patent licensing shall be negotiated between the patent right owner and the applicant for the IPEC specifications. Any dispute over patent issues arising out of implementation of the IPEC specifications shall be settled by a competent authority.

Article 4   IPEC encourages members to disclose, as soon as possible, information about patents (applications) known to them or their affiliates that are relevant to the implementation of the IPEC specifications; however, this does not mean that members are obliged to search for and analyze these patents. No provisions herein will transfer the ownership of any intellectual property right owned or created by one member or any derivative work thereof to another member.

Prior to each work group meeting and approval of the draft IPEC specification, IPEC shall request for disclosure and collection of relevant patent information. If a member does not provide any feedback on the patent information disclosure, that member shall be deemed to have agreed to license the patents covering the draft IPEC specification in accordance with Article 28 hereof.

The patent information to be disclosed by each member shall include:

(1) patent application No. or patent grant No.;

(2) title and abstract of the patent.

Article 5   Members and their affiliates shall submit patent licensing statements in relation to the essential claims. Such licensing statement shall include one of the following elements:

(1) willing to license its patents free of charge to any party implementing the IPEC specifications;

(2) agreement to license any party implementing this standard to enforce its patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (“FRAND”);

(3) refusal to grant a patent license.

Article 6   If a non-member holds essential claims as confirmed by IPEC, the secretary shall, on behalf of the board, request such non-member to submit a corresponding patent licensing statement.

If the patentee refuses to license such patent, or refuses to license such patent on FRAND terms, the secretary general shall convene the consultative committee to seek a solution or adopt other effective measures to solve the problem.

Article 7   The patent licensing statement and commitments submitted by members and non-members to IPEC hereunder are irrevocable. If any member or its affiliate transfers ownership of a standard-related patent, it shall integrate all its statements, commitments and relevant obligations under IPEC into the transfer contract, so that the transferee will continue to comply with and fulfil foregoing statements, commitments and obligations and relevant obligations under IPEC.

Article 8   The submission of technical proposals, technical reports, white papers and other documents based on the intent specified in the patent application mentioned in the previous paragraph shall be deemed as an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, free, non-exclusive, unconditional license to IPEC and the consultative committee. The IPEC secretariat and work group shall use such member’s copyrighted works for the purpose of developing, publishing and promoting relevant technical standards.

Article 9   The copyrights of standards, published reports, white papers and other results developed by IPEC, its consultative committee, secretariat and work groups are owned by IPEC. The copyrights of standards approved for publication by a standard approval authority belongs to that approval authority.

This organization shall grant an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, free, non-exclusive and unconditional permission to its members and their affiliates to use copyrighted works owned by IPEC.

Article 10 To support wide usage of the specification after its first publication, on the premise that members agree to distribute the specification in accordance with the terms, each member agrees to permit unrestricted usage, reproduction and distribution of the specification, unless its authorship belongs to IPEC participants.