The current quest for open standards (OS) as a way to achieve interoperability in converging ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is assessed, to uncover OS economic foundations and policy rationale, beyond the current hype. In fact, OS contain IPRs (patents, copyrights), and are not immune from those anticompetitive behaviours typically stemming from the legal monopoly on IP (intellectual property). At the same time, OS provision is likely to encounter market and public failures, and seems to ask for sustainable mechanisms and incentives. The starting point of the paper is to ascertain whether OS really behave as a more “benign” type of IPRs, which can justify the public emphasis and support paid to them, especially within EU. Later, an unconventional review of the literature is proposed, with the aim of bridging distant fields of theory to better uncover the economics of interoperability provision and OS. Then, the “openness” problems are explored and benchmarked against the emerging category of semi-commons, which provides an original policy perspective on “truly” open IPRs, and might pave new ways to the on-going debate on the reform of ICT standardization in EU.