Schedule and patent policy

One more thing to think about regarding our schedule:

This is the first time we're going to publish the document under the W3C
Patent Policy (it was published under CPP before). We will therefore
trigger a Call for Exclusion, that our respective AC Reps will receive.

As such, organizations will have 150 days to exclude essential claims
from the W3C RF terms [1].

When we will publish the Last Call, we will trigger again a Call for
Exclusion. This second one will last 90 days [1].

Both exclusion periods can overlap so it's ok to publish the Last Call
while the first exclusion period is still ongoing [2].

However, we cannot move to Proposed Recommendation until all exclusion
periods are over [2]. This would mean we wouldn't be able to move to PR
until the beginning of October. The good news is that we can close the
exclusion periods early but only with the approval of *all* the
organizations participating in the Group [3].

So, my recommendation is as follows:

When we publish the Last Call document, we simultaneously ask the
organizations (a total of 6) if it's ok to end the two exclusion period
early, so we can move to PR at the beginning of August.
It will still give two months to the organizations to reply, between the
beginning of June and the end of July.


Philippe

[1]
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-exclusion-with
[2] http://www.w3.org/2003/12/22-pp-faq#mult-exclusions
[3] http://www.w3.org/2003/12/22-pp-faq#early-exclusion-end

Received on Friday, 8 May 2009 20:22:42 UTC