John Kelly, president of the Arlington,said that the JEDEC governing body will meet in the near future to consider what changes it must make to patent disclosure rules that pertain to industry standards deliberations .

The appellate court in January ruled that the JEDEC patent rules were vague and that JEDEC members drafting new standards weren't required to disclose patents until casting ballots on the new specifications. With these guidelines, the appeals court threw out a fraud verdict against Rambus Inc. for failing to disclose its pending synchronous DRAM patents while a member of the JEDEC memory committee drafting the SDRAM industry standard.

The Supreme Court last Monday declined to hear an appeal by Infineon Technologies Inc. to overturn the appellate court decision, leaving in place the edict on when patents should be revealed in standards bodies.

"The appeals court gave us a different patent disclosure policy than was on the JEDEC books, and that is detrimental not only to JEDEC but also to other standards setting organizations in the country," he said.

Kelly said the appellate court ruled that companies have no duty to disclose patents or pending patent applications to a standards body until there is a ballot on a proposed specification. "This has thrown JEDEC patent disclosure rules into a quagmire," he said.

Kelly claimed that without early disclosure of patents, the industry standards process is subverted.