Patents vs Standards

I am very worried about the plans to allow patent-encumbered standards.

To me patents are the opposite of standards, simply because that a
patented approcach will always be controlled by the patent holder and
others will try to avoid the patents and thereby not adhere to the
standard.

As you probably noticed patents really do kill standards, just look at
P3P and MP3 both are supposed to be standards, but neither can legally be
implented without paying the patentholders.

Please change the patent policy so the only allowable licensing mode
becomes:
"Free for all":
   1.  shall be available to all implementers worldwide, whether or not
they are W3C Members;
   2. shall extend to all Essential Claims owned or controlled by the
licensor and its Affiliates (except as described in section 8.2 concerning
licenses relating to Contributions);
   3. may be limited to what is required by the Recommendation;
   4. may not be conditioned on payment of royalties, fees or other
consideration.


The basic principle of most w3c is KISS and a major reason that w3c
standards are so popular is that they are (for the most part) simple and
intuitive.

Patents must not cover something intutive.

Tolerating patents would mean that standards would become non-intutive and
less simple, as that is the basic requierment of a patentable approach.

Please keep the Internet standards free of patents and other proprietary
and anti-stanard garbage.

-- 
 Regards Flemming Frandsen aka. Dion/Swamp http://dion.swamp.dk

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 06:29:20 UTC