Chapter 2: The Organizational Landscape: Types of Standards Bodies

The first question in any standards engagement isn't about IP policy or patent commitments. It's about structure. Where is this work going to happen? In an existing organization or a new one? Under a corporate entity or a multi-party contract? With staff and dues, or on a volunteer basis?

These structural choices cascade into everything else — governance, IP terms, membership dynamics, decision-making power. Get the structure right and the rest follows. Get it wrong and you'll be working around the problems for the life of the project.

This chapter walks through the organizational landscape from the top down, then offers a practical decision framework for choosing a home for new work.

2.1 Formal International Organizations

At the top of the hierarchy sit three international standards bodies: ISO, IEC, and ITU (specifically ITU-T and ITU-R).

ISO and IEC collaborate on technology standards through a joint structure called JTC-1 (Joint Technical Committee 1), which is where work like MPEG video codecs, JPEG image formats, and other technical specifications gets done. Below JTC-1, the work is further divided into subcommittees — SC29 for media coding, for instance. Each level has its own procedures, its own delegates, and its own politics.

ITU-T is a UN-chartered organization focused on telecommunications. It's the most formal of the three, with strong ties to national regulatory bodies.

One critical feature of the international system: companies don't participate directly. You participate through your national body. In the United States, that's INCITS for JTC-1 work, operating under ANSI accreditation. National bodies develop a national position, and that position is cast as a single vote. The US vote counts the same as any other country's vote, regardless of the size of the delegation behind it.

This creates interesting dynamics. The same company may be deeply involved in the technical work, even chairing a committee, but the vote that matters is the national body's. During contentious ballots, companies have to lobby their own national body — and sometimes carry votes they disagree with. It's diplomacy, not direct democracy.

ISO, IEC, and ITU-T all share a common patent policy framework, though each has different implementation guidelines. Think of it as one text with different interpretive traditions. The policies themselves seldom change, and for the most part they're workable. The differences tend to be procedural — things like what information you must provide when declaring a patent, or how the disclosure process operates.

Standards from these bodies carry the most formal weight. WTO agreements give international standards preferential treatment over national ones in trade disputes and government procurement. That matters more in some industries (aerospace, telecom) than in ours, but when it matters, it matters a lot.

The PAS Transposition Process

One mechanism that bridges the international and consortium worlds is the PAS (Publicly Available Specification) submission process. This allows an organization that has been granted PAS submitter status — W3C and the Joint Development Foundation both have it — to develop a specification through its own process and then submit it to ISO/IEC JTC-1 for an international vote. If the national bodies approve it, the consortium spec becomes a formal international standard.

This is significant because it lets you develop a spec where you want — in a faster, more technically focused environment — and then layer the international formality on afterward. The PAS process avoids the overhead of developing the spec within the international system while still achieving the benefits of international recognition: treaty-level status, government procurement eligibility, and regulatory weight.

2.2 National and Regional Standards Bodies

Below the international level, national standards bodies develop standards for their home markets and contribute to international processes.

ANSI (American National Standards Institute) does not write standards. It accredits other organizations to develop them. An ANSI-accredited standard carries the designation "American National Standard," which is valuable for US government procurement. ANSI also coordinates the US participation in ISO and IEC.

In Europe, three organizations fill a similar role: CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI. The European model is more directive than the American one. Where the US tends to let industry self-organize, Europe is more likely to say: we need a standard for this technology, ETSI go develop it, and we'll have regulatory input into the process.

ETSI is particularly significant because it develops the mobile telecommunications standards as part of the broader 3GPP framework. If you're working in anything touching cellular networks, ETSI's rules and FRAND policies are inescapable.

A note on how that "regulatory input" actually plays out lately. The traditional picture is that the Commission issues a standardisation request, the European Standardisation Organisations develop the standard, and the Commission stays out of the room while the work is done. That picture is getting fuzzier, particularly around the development of harmonised European standards (HENs) — the standards that, once cited in the Official Journal, give implementers a presumption of conformity with EU law.

In recent work, Commission representatives have been physically in the room. They have been stating "red lines" — positions the standard cannot cross if it is to be cited as a HEN — but declining to be quoted in the minutes. The substantive influence is real; the documentary trail is thin. For participants and counsel, that creates a practical problem: you are negotiating against constraints that aren't in the policy documents, can't be cited back, and may not be visible to anyone who wasn't in that meeting. It also raises questions about whether the standardisation process retains the independence and transparency that the harmonised-standards regime is supposed to depend on. This is a live tension, and it's worth watching as the case law and the Commission's own practice continue to evolve.

In China, the standards system is more state-directed than either the US or European models, and it has become impossible to ignore in any serious global standards strategy. The realistic picture of global standardisation today is a triangle — the United States, the European Union, and China — and any framing that leaves China out is incomplete. SAC (Standardization Administration of China) sits at the top as the national standards body and the formal interface to ISO and IEC. The two organisations most counsel and standards professionals actually deal with at the working level are CESI (China Electronics Standardization Institute), which covers ICT and electronics standardisation, and CATR (China Academy of Information and Communications Technology), which covers telecommunications. Both are technically research institutes sitting under the relevant ministries, but in practice they drive much of the substantive work and shape the national positions that get carried into international forums.

The Chinese system also uses mandatory national standards — the GB series — as a market-access lever in a way the American and European systems generally do not. The GB18030 character-set example in Chapter 3 is the canonical illustration. The strategic implication for industry is one we'll come back to in Chapter 13: the international route through ISO/IEC is frequently the practical path to a Chinese national-standard adoption, because consortium specifications on their own have limited standing inside the Chinese system. Counsel advising on a global standards strategy in any consequential technology area should assume China is part of the picture from the start, not a follow-on consideration.

Accreditation— whether ANSI accreditation in the US or recognition by European authorities — comes with obligations. Accredited organizations must follow due process requirements: openness, balance of interests, consensus-based decision making, the right to appeal, and transparency. These requirements exist to ensure that standards reflect broad input rather than the interests of a few dominant players. They also provide antitrust protection — a standard developed through a recognized due process is far less likely to face antitrust challenge than one developed behind closed doors. We'll cover due process in depth in Chapter 4.

The differences across the American, European, and Chinese approaches have practical consequences for how you engage, who you lobby, and what rules apply. It's worth understanding all three even if most of your work falls inside one of them.

2.3 Industry Consortia and Foundations

This is where most day-to-day technology standards work happens.

IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) develops the core Internet protocols — TCP/IP, HTTP, TLS, DNS. It operates under the Internet Society and has a distinct culture: no formal membership, no voting in the traditional sense, and a principle of "rough consensus and running code." IETF participation is individual, not corporate, which creates a different dynamic than most standards bodies.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) develops web standards — HTML, CSS, Web APIs, and related technologies. It incorporated as its own legal entity in 2023 after years of operating under a host institution model. W3C's royalty-free patent policy, first adopted in 2004 and updated several times since, was one of the first in the industry and remains influential. Participation is organizational, with membership fees that vary by organization size.

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) focuses on enterprise, security, and interoperability standards. It offers multiple IPR policy modes — RAND, royalty-free on RAND terms, and royalty-free on limited terms — giving technical committees flexibility to match IP terms to their context. OASIS has a well-defined staged specification process and is particularly strong in areas like cybersecurity and cloud standards.

The Linux Foundation operates differently from these. It's primarily a hosting organization — it provides infrastructure, operational support, and governance frameworks for a wide portfolio of open source projects and, increasingly, standards initiatives. The Linux Foundation doesn't develop standards itself; it hosts projects that do. Its scale is significant: hundreds of projects, substantial revenue, and a large professional staff. For projects hosted under the Linux Foundation, it provides accounting, legal support, event management, and program management. The tradeoff is that hosted projects operate within the Linux Foundation's rules and fee structures.

These organizations have open membership, technology-driven cultures, and established processes. If you're doing web work, W3C is the natural home. Internet protocols go to IETF. And so on. Each has its own governance model, its own IP policy, and its own institutional personality.

One thing to watch for: people develop strong affinities for the organizations they know. A standards professional who has spent years working in W3C will naturally want to bring new work there, because they know the people, they know the rules, they know how to navigate the hallways. That's not always wrong — institutional knowledge has real value — but it means you should evaluate the recommendation independently. Is this the right venue for the technology, or is it just the venue the proposer is comfortable with? As counsel, be aware that the recommendation to "go to organization X" may be serving the proposer's professional interests as much as the company's.

Working Within an Existing Organization

Joining an existing standards body is the path of least resistance. You don't need to set up a corporate entity, file for nonprofit status, establish bank accounts, or hire staff. You're joining a gym — you use their equipment, hold meetings in their facilities, and follow their rules. The tradeoff is that you're subject to those rules, including IP policies and governance structures you didn't write and may not love.

This approach makes the most sense when the work fits naturally into an existing organization's scope, when you don't need your own identity or brand, and when you're comfortable with the organization's process. A lot of standards work fits these criteria perfectly. Not everything needs a new foundation.

Setting Up a New Organization

Sometimes you do need your own identity. You want your own name, your own website, your own brand. You want to control membership criteria. You need a certification program or a logo. Or you want to work with a specific set of partners and don't want the fully open participation model that established organizations require.

The decision to form a new organization is significant, and the single most important question in making it is deceptively simple: do you need to hold money?

If the answer is no — if participants can volunteer their time, rotate meeting hosting, and the work doesn't require paid staff — you can stay lightweight. A contractual consortium or the Community Specification License (discussed in Chapter 9) may be sufficient.

If the answer is yes — you need to hire a program manager, pay for a website, organize conferences, run a certification program — you need a corporate entity with a bank account. And that changes everything.

2.4 Contractual Consortia

A contractual consortium is the simplest multi-party structure. There's no incorporated entity. It's a contract — everyone signs the same agreement, and the rights and obligations flow from that agreement alone.

These have real advantages. They're cheaper to set up and cheaper to run than incorporated entities. There's no corporate formality, no annual filings, no nonprofit status to maintain. For a small group working on a focused problem, they can work well.

The disadvantages are equally real.

They don't scale. A contractual consortium works for maybe eight to twelve companies. Beyond that, the logistics of getting everyone to sign and managing the agreement become unwieldy.

They're hard to amend. If you want to change the agreement, you generally need everyone to re-execute. That effectively gives every participant a veto. In practice, changes can take months, particularly when participants with complex internal approval processes are involved.

They can't hold money. There's no entity to maintain a bank account. If you need to host a meeting, someone volunteers and pays. Need a website? Someone builds one on their own time. Need a program manager? You don't have one. This volunteer model works until it doesn't, and when it stops working, there's no easy fix.

They have longevity problems. Contractual consortia tend not to die formally. People lose interest and walk away, but the agreement just sits there. Meanwhile, the spec is still being implemented. Years later, someone needs an authoritative copy and there's no organization maintaining one. The spec ends up floating on a random website with no clear provenance.

Contractual consortia can transition to formal incorporated entities, and some have done so successfully. But the transition itself is a heavy lift — it requires renegotiating the underlying agreements, establishing corporate governance, and managing the administrative overhead of incorporation, all while trying to keep the technical work moving forward. The distraction can be significant. The evolution of frameworks like the Joint Development Foundation has provided an increasingly viable and preferred alternative, offering the benefits of a formal structure without the startup burden of building one from scratch.

2.5 Incorporated Standards Organizations

When you need staff, money, and formal governance, you incorporate. That means choosing a state of incorporation, filing for nonprofit status (typically 501(c)(6) for industry standards), establishing bylaws, setting up bank accounts, and managing ongoing corporate formality.

Most organizations outsource the operational side to association management companies — firms that specialize in running standards bodies. They provide accounting, program management, website maintenance, and event logistics. The advantage is that you don't have to build that capability yourself. The disadvantage is that these companies are businesses with their own revenue incentives. They'll push for additional services, strategic consulting, expanded programs. You need to manage them actively.

The alternative is to operate under a larger umbrella organization. Several options exist: the Linux Foundation, IEEE ISTO, the Joint Development Foundation, and OASIS all provide hosting infrastructure for standards projects. Each has its own fee structure, operational model, and degree of autonomy for hosted projects. Choosing among them involves evaluating cost, flexibility, institutional fit, and the community you want to attract.

Membership structures in incorporated organizations typically involve tiered classes — a steering committee or board with greater decision-making power, and one or more general membership tiers with participation rights but less control. The design of these tiers matters enormously. The top tier typically controls the organization's direction, approves specifications, and manages the budget. Lower tiers contribute technical work and participate in committees but may not have a vote on organizational governance.

Getting the membership criteria right is one of the hardest practical problems in setting up a new organization. The criteria need to be objective — antitrust law requires that similarly situated parties be treated alike. But every "objective" criterion is, at some level, subjective. If you offer a board seat to one major company in a sector, you need a principled reason for saying no to its direct competitor. Geographic diversity, industry segment representation, and revenue thresholds are common approaches, and getting the balance right requires careful thought about the specific context.

2.6 The Joint Development Foundation

The Joint Development Foundation was created to solve the problems described above — specifically, the three-to-nine-month startup period consumed by negotiating agreements that all look the same at the end.

JDF provides a standards organization in a box: predefined governance documents, predefined IP policy modes, and a corporate structure that's ready to use. A new project can be launched in days rather than months.

The Legal Structure

JDF uses a series LLC model. The parent entity is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organized in Washington State. Underneath it sits JDF Projects LLC, a Delaware Series LLC. Each project operates as a separate series within JDF Projects LLC. This provides structural insulation — the liabilities and IP commitments of one project don't bleed into another. A company participating in Project A has no patent exposure to Project B.

This structure was novel when JDF introduced it. It was borrowed from real estate law, where series LLCs are used to separate properties within a single entity. There was initial skepticism about whether it would work for standards, but it has proven effective. The Linux Foundation subsequently adopted the same series structure for its own projects.

How It Works

When a new project is chartered under JDF, the participants select from predefined governance terms and IP policy modes — including multiple patent licensing options. The working group charter specifies which mode applies. There's no negotiation over the framework itself. The framework is non-negotiable by design.

This is a deliberate philosophical choice. By removing the legal negotiation from the project setup, JDF keeps attorneys out of the critical path. Engineers can focus on the technical work without waiting months for lawyers to agree on terms that, historically, end up within the range of reasonable anyway.

The tradeoff is flexibility. You can't customize the JDF framework the way you can with a bespoke agreement. For most projects, that's fine — the predefined options cover the common cases. For projects with unusual requirements, JDF may not be the right fit.

Operational Reality

JDF projects operate under the Linux Foundation's infrastructure. This provides accounting, tax filing, program management, and administrative support. The advantages are significant: no startup cost for operations, access to established processes, and a recognized institutional home.

JDF has become the default starting point for new standards collaborations in many areas. It now hosts dozens of active projects. For most engagements where the predefined framework fits, the speed and simplicity of JDF outweigh the limitations.

2.7 The Decision Framework

When someone comes to you and says "we want to do a standards thing," here's the decision tree.

Do you even need an organization? Sometimes a unilateral spec release under an open license is enough. If you're just publishing documentation for others to implement, you may not need collaboration infrastructure at all.

Do you need to collaborate? If yes, but the collaboration is lightweight — a handful of parties, no money needed, no formal identity required — tools like the Open Web Foundation agreements or the Community Specification License (CSL) may be sufficient. They provide IP terms without organizational overhead. We'll cover CSL in more detail in Chapter 9.

Can the work fit in an existing organization? If the technology aligns with an established body's scope, and you don't need to control membership or branding, joining an existing organization avoids the cost and complexity of forming a new one. This is often the best answer, even if it's not the most exciting one.

Do you need your own identity? If you need a name, a brand, a website, a certification program — or if you need to control who participates and at what level — you're forming a new organization.

Do you need money? This is the fork in the road. If no, a contractual consortium or similar lightweight structure can work. If yes, you need a corporate entity with a bank account, and the overhead that comes with it.

How fast do you need to move? If speed matters — and it usually does — JDF or a similar predefined framework avoids months of legal negotiation. If you have genuinely unusual requirements that the predefined frameworks can't accommodate, a bespoke structure may be necessary, but go in with eyes open about the time and cost.

The right answer depends on the specific engagement. But the questions are always the same. And the most important one — do you need money — is the one that most often determines the path.