W3C Must Insist on Royalty-Free patent licenses

To whom it may concern:

This is a public comment about the W3C Patent Policy Framework Working
Draft (PPFWD). The PPFWD consists of 3 main components:

1. disclosure requirement
2. royalty-free (RF) licensing mode
3. reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing mode

In my humble opinion, the W3C makes a grave mistake in endorsing RAND
licensing schemes. The World Wide Web is a showcase of the superiority of
the free software approach for the benefit of the users of software. The
World Wide Web is unthinkable without its free software roots. Permitting
W3C standards that are encumbered by patents with licenses that require
royalty payments amounts to a stab in the back of the World Wide Web
community.

I strongly oppose the idea of allowing a RAND mode for W3C standards of
any kind.

The requirement to disclose all potentially relevant patents at the start
of a standardization effort makes sense. Submitting companies must be
required to license any patents they may control, that would be infringed
by an implementation, on a royalty-free basis.

Regards, Joachim Achtzehnter

-- 
work:     joachima@netacquire.com   (http://www.netacquire.com)
private:  joachim@kraut.ca          (http://www.kraut.ca)

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 14:24:40 UTC