RAND Standard
Definition
From the FFII:
"A public specification normalized and licensed under terms that are public and common for all the licensees. Patent rights should be declared during the standardization process. Usually RAND terms is the minimum that standardization bodies ask for to grant a standard (ie. ISO and OASIS). Specification itself could cost money. ISO/IEC should be included in that category. Should be noticed that, contrary to what RAND stands for ("Reasonable and Non Discriminatory"), that RAND standards frequently discriminate to part of the industry or to some development models as FLOSS. Ie. FLOSS and other free distribution software are taken apart from the possibility to implement the standard just from the moment that the RAND license states a fee per copy, since it is impossible to account the number of copies distributed. Additionally, some RAND licenses include terms that explicitly discriminate to FLOSS and other development models that show the source code of the programs, by forcing to the implementers to close the code of the implementation of the standard." (http://action.ffii.org/openstandards)
From the Wikipedia:
"A RAND standard is a standard developed under RAND licensing conditions. Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing (RAND) is a term for a type of licensing typically used during standardisation processes. The normal case is that when joining the standardisation body, companies agree that if they receive any patents on technologies which become essential to the standard then they agree to allow other groups attempting to implement the standard to use those patents and they agree that the charges for those patents shall be reasonable. RAND licenses allow a competitive market to develop between multiple companies making products which implement a standard." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_Non_Discriminatory_Licensing)
More Information
- Typology of Open Standards