The Internet of Things

Abstract

Apple iPhones do not use the standardized micro-Universal Serial Bus (USB) port but specialized ports for their proprietary Lightning connectors. However, in October 2018, Apple’s vice-president of hardware engineering John Ternus announced the switch to USB-C for the new generation of iPads from 2019. Apple iPhone is expected to follow suit. This marks the end to a long battle over port standardization for personal computers within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The change came about due to a push from the European Commission for industry to agree on a universally proprietary free standard. This chapter documents how states have been increasingly involved in steering intellectual property rights (IPR) policies within standards-developing organization (SDO) fora. Civil society too has had a role to play from the stance of open source solutions to interoperability, albeit with less and varying degrees of success across the fora. The chapter focuses on how state pressure has counterbalanced historic corporate pressure for preserving patent protection.