- From: Paul Dundas <paul.dundas@btinternet.com>
- Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 01:12:52 +0100
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- CC: pdundas@btinternet.com
Sirs, I believe that the recent proposals to permit standards which require royalty payments from implementors or users of compliant software seriously threatens the open development model which has produced the internet of today, and on which it depends. We should make every effort to ensure, as far as possible, that any future standards can also be implemented by the same open process that has served the internet and its users so well thus far. Continued competition between open source and proprietary developers can only be a good thing for software and its users -- but it is difficult to see how open-source developments can take place when licence payments (however non-discriminatory they may be for commercial developers) are required. I would make two suggestions. 1) Participants in the W3C standards process may be "invited" (or required, as a condition of their participation) to grant a license to use, free of any royalties, any patent which they may hold (or subsequently acquire) for the purpose of implementing the agreed standard, to the extent necessary to produce a workable and complete implementation of the agreed standard. ["complete", to avoid having "chargable extras" in the standard, and "workable" to prevent typos, bugs or mistakes in the standard which would render it technically unworkable, if interpreted to the letter]. This would protect against (deliberately or accidentally) incomplete internal patent searches by the participants. The IP owning company's interests would still be protected by allowing disclosure of any such patent (or patent application) to the standardising group, together with a revocation of the royalty-free license, at any time BEFORE that standard is agreed. This would allow the standardising group to make the appropriate decision to approve an alternative unencumbered proposal. 2) If it is not acceptable to grant a royalty-free license to all and sundry then, as a minimum, royalty-free licenses must be available for non-commercial, open-source implementations of the standard. For commercial or closed-source developments, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (in the sense of not discriminating against other commercial developments) terms should be a minimum requirement for any W3C standard. While this seems a less satisfactory approach, it may reassure companies who are unwilling to see their competitors profiting from their IP. This approach would clearly require agreement on what constitutes open-source in this context, but a number of candidate definitions of open-sourceness already exist, and I have every confidence in the W3C's ability to clarify this issue. Defining standards is, after all, what you do. I hope these suggestions are of interest, and may be of some help in considering this important issue. regards, Paul Dundas pdundas@btinternet.com
Received on Sunday, 7 October 2001 20:10:18 UTC