Re: Patent Protections at CR

On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:38:57 -0800, Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com> wrote:

> On Nov 16, 2011, at 22:34 , Carr, Wayne wrote:
>> It isn't just to have something for lawyers to review.  Some companies  
>> may not want licensing commitments for their intellectual property that  
>> doesn't actually make it into the spec.  Candidate Rec could lead to  
>> features being thrown out.  I think for at least some companies they'd  
>> want to know it is a real, implementable spec that they're donating to.
>
> Right.

Yep. I think that is fair enough.

> When this has come up before, the idea that was suggested was that there  
> would be a timeout on the CR licensing commitment (e.g. 2 years) that  
> would hold automatically (i.e. if you agree to it you can't back out of  
> it) for all features that make it to Rec but not for anything that gets  
> dropped. And it would be automatically cancelled if the spec didn't make  
> it to Rec in time (if it's still in development, then a renewed CR would  
> be required I would assume).

A sunset timeout would maintain the rationale to create a recommendation.  
As Anne said, the technology is continually evolving, but this case is  
*one* of those where you need a stable agreed snapshot to get a commitment  
to it.

A commitment that ran through to REC would be nice. I'm not sure it is  
required, but I'd be happy to have on the table. However it requires a  
change to the patent policy.

(There is a whole separate thread to be had on dealing with the fact that  
technology changes but specs need stop points - this is just a use case  
IMHO).

cheers

-- 
Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan litt norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Thursday, 17 November 2011 19:10:43 UTC