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Funded R&D work to look to standards for interoperability
ETSI hosted a two day workshop toward the end of last year, which has confirmed that standards and interoperability are essential to the success of European Technology Platforms (ETPs) - Industry led initiatives, defining research and development priorities for the European Union.
In his address to the workshop, Bernard Barani, Attaché, European Commission Communications and Network Technologies Directorate stated that “Strong interactions between ICT R&D and standards has proved to be an efficient way to promote research results” and he encouraged Standards makers to further use the member base of the ETP's - particularly in terms of cooperation within the European Commission IST Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), which provides significant funding for R&D.
The ETSI Director General, Walter Weigel, emphasized the need for clear thinking and leadership from Europe to help produce standards as early in the design phase as possible, reducing the need for 'ex-post' interoperability tests to uncover the problems that should have been addressed at the beginning.
Dr. Weigel gave the example of how having a core IMS standard in converging ICT networks is a key factor towards interoperability down-stream in the manufacturing process. Echoing the call for better optimization between research and standardization. David Kennedy, Director, Eurescom said, “Existing ETP's NEM and eMobility will raise the relationship between the Platforms and standardization at their next joint meeting with NESSI and ISI”.
Drawing on past experiences Konstantinos Karachalios of the European Patent Office emphasised the need for IPR policies to allow patents and standards to follow complimentary trajectories, he commented, “A clear necessity for closer structural dialogue between the worlds of IP and standards has emerged from this conference. This is most useful and, one hopes, will lead to more concrete steps, such as the crystallization of an overall IPR strategy to be implemented, both at the level of the SDOs and Patent offices.”
