Establishment of 29 international standards, - 187 seats in the IOP leadership, active standardization activities on the international stage

Securing prior art patents alongside the development of core technologies is essential for research and development. Furthermore, efforts to guide existing patents toward becoming international standards can be considered a strategic R&D activity required to gain a leading position in the global market.

Efforts to secure international standard patents, often referred to as the "goose that lays golden eggs," are gaining further momentum. Last year, ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) secured 114 international standard patents, bringing its cumulative total to over 600.

Considering that each case is valued at approximately $10 million (about 12 billion won), this amounts to well over 7 trillion won.

Among these, standard patents in fields such as MPEG, 3G, 4G mobile communication, and 3DTV are particularly concentrated. A comprehensive review of ETRI's major standardization achievements over the past year, supported by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning's R&D and standardization projects, reveals that it was a year in which vigorous standardization activities on the international stage were highlighted.

Over the past year, ETRI achieved a total of 187 leadership positions in more than 30 international standardization organizations, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), including the establishment of 29 international standards, 42 contributions reflecting standard patents, and the assumption of 2 new vice-chair positions at the SG (Study Group) level.

Standard patents are particularly concentrated in the fields of MPEG, 3G and 4G mobile communications, and 3DTV.

This performance indicates that ETRI has been maintaining a continuous growth trend in standardization. In addition, the number of international standard contributions related to ICT submitted and published by ETRI researchers last year alone totaled 1,141.

In the entire field of ICT, which is no different from a battlefield without gunfire, ETRI is playing the role of a vanguard for global standardization.

In particular, last year, aggressive standardization achievements were made, such as reflecting market demand and responding to national-level strategic standardization through aggressive standardization activities in major fields including 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), Software Defined Network (SDN), cloud, big data, and smart media.

Based on the adoption of the Korean government’s CONNECT 2020 and new agendas for promoting the Internet of Things through the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-14) held in Busan in October 2014, the establishment of the 5G Focus Group (FG IMT-2020) within ITU-T SG13 (Future Networks) took the lead last April.

In addition, last June, it achieved remarkable results, such as leading the establishment of SG20 (Internet of Things and Smart City) during a standardization session for the first time in the 60-year history of ITU-T standardization. Furthermore, this is also the inaugural year for strengthening open-source-based standardization activities, focusing on the Internet of Things (IoT) sector, to develop and lead the dissemination of open standards in line with the recent changes in the global ICT paradigm.

In fact, ETRI began open-source-based standardization cooperation with Samsung Electronics in the field of the Internet of Things last year, and is leading the establishment of a healthcare group and the development of healthcare-related open-source standards through the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), which can be described as an open-source-based IoT platform collaboration led by Samsung Electronics and Intel.

In addition, efforts to secure standardization initiatives for convergence new technologies have been strengthened, such as leading the development of autonomous vehicle platform interface technology standards within the autonomous vehicle group of the global W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium). Within ETRI, centered around the 'Standards Research Center,' the organization overseeing standardization, work has been carried out to support the development of standardization strategies and policy formulation not only within ETRI but also at the national level.

The Standard Research Center at ETRI’s Future Strategy Research Institute consists of approximately 50 standard experts, most of whom play a leading role in Korea’s ICT standardization field by serving on the leadership boards of international standardization organizations.

Following ETRI's recent organizational restructuring, the ETRI Standards Research Center, affiliated with the Future Strategy Research Institute, plans to create an impact that maximizes the value of standards by strengthening thoroughly user-centered standardization activities—focused on market demand and public benefits—in collaboration with the government. In particular, this year we plan to focus on solidifying the standardization cooperation system with various domestic small and medium-sized enterprises.

Kim Hyung-joon, Head of the Standards Research Center at ETRI, stated, "We plan to aim for a qualitative improvement in our international standardization leadership by strengthening the establishment of ETRI's standardization strategy to qualitatively systematize internal standardization activities and further solidifying our efforts to link R&D with standardization."