Standards are indispensable in many technical areas today, as they enable and ensure the interoperability and compatibility of systems, networks and their components.
Technical standards are usually negotiated and defined by standard-setting organisations, so-called norm standards. Well-known examples are the GSM, GPRS, UMTS or LTE telecommunications standards administered by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). In addition, technical solutions can become standards simply by virtue of their market acceptance, so-called industry standards. The operating systems Google Android or Apple iOS are examples of this.
Individual technical aspects of standardised technologies are often protected by patents. For example, it is not uncommon for several thousand patents to be relevant for a modern telecommunications standard.
