Patents have no place in standards

There is no place for commercial patents, nor any other form of intellectual
property in standards. From your own web site detailing design principles of
the web (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/#role)

"Interoperability: Specifications for the Web's languages and protocols must
be compatible with one another and allow (any) hardware and software used to
access the Web to work together."

By introducing intellectual property to standards, you potentially disallow
various sets of hardware and software not to access certain web languages
and protocols. RAND goes against the own principles with which the W3C was
created.

"Decentralization: Decentralization is without a doubt the newest principle
and most difficult to apply. To allow the Web to "scale" to worldwide
proportions while resisting errors and breakdowns, the architecture(like the
Internet) must limit or eliminate dependencies on central registries."

Yes, the W3C must eliminate the potential for a central point of failure.
The introduction of an IP holder over open standards introduces this
possibility. It can not be allowed to proceed.

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 21:04:11 UTC