Many standards (i.e. agreed set of rules or requirements with respect to a technology) are implemented by the automotive industry for connectivity, entertainment (cloud/internet access), navigation (real time traffic, augmented reality), vehicle relationship management, maintenance, etc. Such standards include, for instance, WAVE (Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment), DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communications) and HaLow (Wireless technology).
SEPs are patents which are necessarily implemented in standard-compliant products. These patents are voluntarily declared as essential to standard-setting organizations (“SSO”) by their holder but their “essentiality” to the standard is not checked by anybody.
In consideration to this inclusion of the SEP in a standard, most SSOs require SEP holders to make their patents available to all implementers on Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms and conditions (the so-called FRAND terms), in order to support a wide adoption of the standards and ensure equivalent licensing terms to all willing licensees.