- From: <Gemeinnutz@LuftHans.com>
- Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:50:23 -0700 (MST)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
moin, moin, Stamdards limiting their implementation via licensing limitations aren't standards. Section 4.(e).5 of the "W3C Patent Policy Framework W3C Working Draft 16 August 2001", as published at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/, states patent licenses "may be conditioned on payment of reasonable, non-discriminatory royalties or fees". Fees for use or implementation are categorically discriminatory. They require extra burdens for one group to use the standard, while permitting others to skip those extra burdons. They allow the patent holders to extort others. Standards that aren't freely implementable are not standards. It is not improper to demand that patent holders wishing to have their patents used in standards make those patents available on a royalty free, RF, basis. The standards bodies must refuse to adopt or promote "standards" that are tainted by a non-RF patent license. That doesn't mean patent holders lose all rights when technology they've patented comes up for use in a standard. In fact, standards bodies have an obligation to investigate and avoid patented technology that isn't RF. The draft also appropriately addresses some issues such as how section 8.3 describes the term of the license granted the W3C. It is appropriate that if the Proposed Recommendation does not get approved in a suitable time that the licensor can revoke the license. It is also appropriate that if a Recommendation is revoked for some reason prior licensing still holds ( to protect those who've already implemented the Recommendation ), but that the licensor is not obligated to further licensing in the future. It is also appropriate that a patent holder be permitted to refuse to allow their patent to be used RF. At that point the W3C needs to make sure not to include that patent in standards. There will be more and more clashes as companies start to pursue patents in Internet technologies. That will make open, RF standards even more important. The W3C's duty as evinced by it's own documentation is "to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability". Common protocols for evolution and interoperability require RF protocols. The W3C's mission statement as well as it's goal of "universal access" are further evidence that the W3C's charter requires RF standards. The Internet and the World Wide Web were built on open, implementable RF standards. The W3C has had direct experience with non-standard standards due to all the browser "standards". These are still the bane of Web developers worldwide. At the same time there are certanly more html pages than proprietary format documents even though html is "harder" and relatively new. There is more data interchange ( communication ) via html than previously possible with all the format incompatabilities ( word, word perfect, etc. ). One of the major reasons was open, publicly implementable, RF standards. The W3C must use it's influence to require open, freely implementable standards not to support closed, discriminatory standards. There needs to be only one licensing mode for W3C working committees, namely RF. Changing membership requirements such that W3C members must disclose patents relevant to proposed standards is great. The W3C needs that to help keep it from being bushwhacked, so section 7 is a good idea. Maybe the PAG mechanism of section 6 should be maintained, but it's charter changed to be for helping solve issues when an unknown patent is discovered late in the standardization process. Change RAND to RF in section 8. It's important to allow member firms to refuse to allow their patented technology to be used in an RF manner. The W3C must then refuse to allow a standard to be dependent on that technology. It's also important to maintain section 8.3 to protect the licensor's options. Please protect the standards, the ability of Free Software developers and small companies to produce software compatable with the standards, the W3C's credibility and the Web itself by demanding the W3C adopt only RF standards. danke, der.hans -- # der.hans@LuftHans.com home.pages.de/~lufthans/ www.DevelopOnline.com # Knowledge is useless unless it's shared. - der.hans
Received on Thursday, 11 October 2001 06:42:57 UTC