PATENTS

World Wide Web Consortium
Patent Policy Working Group

Dear W3C Patent Policy Working Group,

I am concerned about the recent Patent Policy Framework draft, which 
could allow W3C members to charge royalty fees for technologies 
included in web standards.

In particular, I object to the inclusion of a "reasonable and 
non-discriminatory" (RAND) licensing option in the proposed policy. I 
believe that the exclusive use of a "royalty-free" (RF) licensing 
model is in the best interests of the Internet community, and that 
RAND licensing would always necessarily exclude some would-be 
implementors.

I applaud the W3C for its tradition of providing open-source 
reference implementations and its work to promote a wide variety of 
interoperable implementations of its open standards.
The W3C can best continue its work of "leading the Web to its full 
potential" by continuing this tradition, and saying no to RAND 
licensing.

It would appear from the discussion on the Internet that 
implementation of RAND licensing may eventually lead to a `fork'. One 
has to consider if such a schism is in the best interests of the 
Internet community.

Yours sincerely

John Seago

Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 09:09:51 UTC