No to RAND licensing

Dear W3C Patent Policy Working Group,

I object to the inclusion of a "reasonable and 
non-discriminatory" (RAND) licensing option in the
proposed Patent Policy Framework.

The technology developed and maintained by the w3c is
used by individuals and organisations throughout the
whole world, not as the basis for their products or
services, but as their means of doing business and
providing service.  

Allowing patents on standards such as HTML and HTTP
seems just as ridiculous to many people as allowing
patents on spoken languages such as English, Spanish
or German.

Tim Berners-Lee has illustrated my point of view in a
FAQ on the w3c site:
"proprietary features which have not been agreed by
all companies ... [are] done either by those who have
an interest in pushing a particular company, or it is
done by those who are anxious to take the community
back to the dark ages of computing when a floppy from
a PC wouldn't read on a Mac, and a Wordstar document
wouldn't read in Word Perfect, or an EBCDIC file
wouldn't read on an ASCII machine. It's fine for
individuals whose work is going to be transient and
who aren't worried about being read by anyone."

The W3C has done a brilliant job this far.  Please
continue doing so by keeping Cyberspace patent free.

Sincerely
A. Carl Douglas


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com

Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2001 23:30:39 UTC