- From: Philip Mansfield <PhilipM@schemasoft.com>
- Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 19:10:36 -0700
- To: "'www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org'" <www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org>
Here are SchemaSoft's comments on the Patent Policy working draft at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/ We have carefully reviewed the above document, and compared it with our experience of the "status quo" while involved with the creation of SVG 1.0. We believe that although the proposed patent policy is well-intentioned, its implementation within the W3C would fundamentally violate the principles on which the W3C was founded, and would be inferior to the status quo. In particular, OUR OBJECTION: No mention of RAND or any other policy promoting the ability to charge royalties should appear in a W3C document. The W3C's mission is to promote open standards, not to promote the conditions under which any company can enforce its patents by charging royalties. Nor does the W3C have any ability to control whether a company claims others must pay royalties. The W3C can only control the terms under which a company contributes to the formation of standards (terms such as we have suggested below). Although RAND attempts to be a minor improvement on the status quo by ensuring royalties and other conditions are "reasonable", it is not actually an improvement because it provides a mechanism for companies to have their royalty claims officially recognized by the W3C, creating the impression that the W3C endorses such claims (whether they actually do or not). On the other hand, it is fine for the W3C to mention and promote RF within its policy documents, since RF is consistent with W3C's mission to promote open standards. OUR SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVE: A condition of participation in any W3C Working Group should be that every Contribution made by a member is made as a royalty-free Contribution. In particular, the participating company must agree in advance to not charge for implementation of any of their representative's Contributions to the standard. Whether they make a claim against someone else's Contribution is another matter, and not something the W3C can control or have policy about, since it is impossible to know in advance what everyone else's contribution will be. Of course, the notion of "Contribution" in the above-suggested policy has to be formalized, for example, along the lines of 4(c) in the existing Patent Policy Framework working draft. With our suggested policy, any company that has a patent on a truly innovative idea (not obvious to others skilled in the art) can simply not contribute that idea. Without this suggested policy, companies will actually be motivated to steer the "open" standards in directions that maximize their potential royalties, defeating the purpose of an open standard. ........................ Philip Mansfield, AC Representative Schema Software Inc.
Received on Thursday, 11 October 2001 22:10:49 UTC