> I do think there's value and a lot of work in coming up with a standard that manufacturers agree on. It's a huge coordination problem, based on the idea of unlinking a standard's success with the success of, say, a hardware competitor. It's real work!

It's work they would be doing anyway because they all benefit from it, which is why it isn't a coordination problem. The known and effective coordination solution is a standards body. Everyone sends their representative in to hash out how the standard should work. They all have the incentive to do it because they all want a good standard to exist.

Moreover, the cost of developing the standard is a minor part of the total costs of being in the industry, so nobody has to worry about exactly proportioning a cost which is only a rounding error to begin with and the far larger problem is companies trying to force everyone else to license their patents by making them part of the standard, or using a standard-essential patent to impose NDAs etc.

> And like.... HDMI is an invention, right? If that isn't then what is?

It's not really a single invention, but that's not the point anyway.

Patenting something which is intrinsically necessary for interoperability is cheating, because the normal limit on what royalties or terms you can impose for using an invention is its value over the prior art or some alternative invention, whereas once it's required for interoperability you're now exceeding the value of what you actually invented by unjustly leveraging the value of interoperating with the overall system and network effect.

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rtpg 2 days ago | parent [-]

> It's work they would be doing anyway because they all benefit from it, which is why it isn't a coordination problem

HDMI: tech is shared between you and competitors, but you don't get to collect all the licensing fees for yourself

Some bespoke interface: you can make the bet that your tech is so good that you get to have control over it _and_ you get to license it out and collect all the fees

in the standards case, the standards body will still charge licensing fees but there's an idea that it's all fair play.

Apple had its lightning cable for its iPhones. It collaborated with a standards body for USB-C stuff. Why did it make different decisions there? Because there _are_ tradeoffs involved!

(See also Sony spending years churning through tech that it tried to unilaterally standardize)

	▲	AnthonyMouse 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> HDMI: tech is shared between you and competitors, but you don't get to collect all the licensing fees for yourself > Some bespoke interface: you can make the bet that your tech is so good that you get to have control over it _and_ you get to license it out and collect all the fees Except that these are alternatives to each other. If it's your bespoke thing then there are no licensing fees because nobody else is using it. Moreover, then nobody else is using it and then nobody wants your thing because it doesn't work with any of their other stuff. Meanwhile it's not about whether something is a formal standard or not. The government simply shouldn't grant or enforce patents on interoperability interfaces, in the same way and for the same reason that it shouldn't be possible to enforce a copyright over an API.