[Studies in Law, Politics and Society] Studies in Law, Politics and Society Volume 50 || Human, not too human: Why is mediation a profound alternative to the legal proceedings?Sarat, Austin · 2009

[IEEE 2nd IEEE Conference on Standardization and Innovation in Information Technology. Proceedings - Boulder, CO, USA (3-6 Oct. 2001)] Proceedings from the 2nd IEEE Conference on Standardization and Innovation in Information Technology (Cat. No.01EX530) - The role of institutions in mediating the use of intellectual property rights has long been neglected in debates over the economics of intellectual property. In a path-breaking work, Rob Merges studied what he calls "collective rights organizations, " industry groups that collect intellectual property rights from owners and license them as a package. Merges finds that these organizations ease some of the tensions created by strong intellectual property rights by allowing industries to bargain from a property rule into a liability rule. Collective rights organizations thus play a valuable role in facilitating transactions in intellectual property rights. There is another sort of organization that mediates between intellectual property owners and users, however. Standard-setting organizations (SS0s) regularly encounter situations in which one or more companies claim to own proprietary rights that cover a proposed industry standard. The industry cannot adopt the standard without the permission of the intellectual property owner (or owners). Given the importance of SSO rules governing intellectual property rights, there has been surprisingly little treatment of SSOs or their intellectual property rules in the legal literature. My aim in this article is to fill that void. To do so, I have surveyed the intellectual property policies qJ_ dozens of SS0s, primarily but not exclusively in the Antitrust, intellectual property and standard setting organizationsLemley, M.A. · 2001