> 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)

> 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.