Technical Standards
A technical standard is a document in which an industry agrees on how something works, e.g. how a phone talks to a mobile network (5G), how a browser loads a page (HTTP/3) or how a video is compressed (H.265). Standards are written by standards bodies, and every product that wants to work together with others has to follow them.
A standard is usually a long document with numbered clauses, and it keeps changing from version to version. In Patalyze you can search the standards of the most important bodies, add the ones you need to a database and read them clause by clause.
Our standards corpus#
Our standards corpus holds the standards of ETSI, IETF, ITU-T, W3C and ISO. ETSI also publishes the 3GPP specifications behind mobile networks, so those are included as well. We hold the full text of every standard, except for ISO. ISO sells its standards, so for those we only hold the catalogue entry, e.g. the title, the scope and the status.
Every version of a standard is a record of its own, because an essentiality argument has to cite the version that was in force at the relevant date. If you only want the newest version of each standard, set the Latest filter to Latest in release.
Adding standards#
Just like patents, you can ask a research agent to find and add standards for you, or click the plus button after the page tabs of your database and choose Standards. That opens the same search dialog as for patents.
In the dialog, you search by keywords or by meaning. The Text filter looks for your words anywhere in a standard, its full text included. Set it to similar to and you can simply describe a feature in plain language, or paste a claim. Filters narrow the matches, e.g. by organization, status or publication date.
For the 3GPP specifications, the Series and Release filters save you from working out the ETSI numbers. For example, Organization set to ETSI, Series set to 38 and Release set to Rel-17 list the 5G radio specifications of Release 17.
Reading a standard#
Open a standard and its page shows the designation with its version, organization and status, followed by the title and the abstract. Below that you find the clauses, in an index you can expand and search. Opening a clause shows its text.
Declared patents#
Standards bodies ask patent holders to declare the patents that may be essential to their standards, i.e. patents that anyone who implements the standard would need. A standard's page lists them under Declared patents, and every declared patent in our patent corpus links to its page.
Be aware that a declaration is only the patent holder's statement that a patent may be essential. It takes a mapping to test whether it really is.
To find the standards a patent is declared against, add a Patent filter with its publication number in the search dialog. You can also paste a whole list of numbers, e.g. the portfolio you are reviewing.
Charting a patent against a standard#
To test whether a patent is standard essential, simply ask a research agent to chart it against the standard. The resulting mapping tests whether implementing the standard requires the claimed invention, and each element is cited to the clause of the standard that carries it.
Since we only hold the catalogue entry of an ISO standard, upload your own copy of it and the agent charts against that instead.
Public pages, API and MCP#
Every standard has a public page that anyone can open without an account. Your own code reaches the same corpus through the Data API, and AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT through our MCP servers.