Computer Standards
Many computer industry standards, especially those developed and submitted by industry consortiums or individual companies, involve royalties for the actual use of these standards. These royalties are typically charged on a "per port" basis, where the manufacturer of end-user devices has to pay a small fixed fee for each device sold. With millions of devices sold each year, the royalties can amount to several millions of dollars, which is a significant burden for the manufacturer. Examples of such royalties-based standards include IEEE 1394, HDMI, and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Examples of royalty-free standards include DisplayPort, VGA, VP8, and Matroska.
Royalty-free standards do not include any "per-port" or "per-volume" charges or annual payments for the use of the standard, even though the text of the actual specification is typically protected by copyright and needs to be purchased from the standards body.
Most open standards are royalty-free, and many proprietary standards are royalty-free as well.
Read more about this topic: Royalty-free
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