- From: Burt Betchart <burton.betchart@oberlin.edu>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 13:33:06 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I am writing to express my concern about the proposed change in W3C patent policy. Specifically, the RAND licensing model would legitimize the incorporation of royalty licensed patents into standards issued by the W3C. While it is true that the W3C should have a policy to deal with the "inevitable increase in patent issues that will come before individual WGs and the Membership as a whole," I believe that such a policy must not include standardizing intellectual property which is not available royalty-free. In particular, there is no fee which is resonable for developers of free software (GPL, BSD, etc.) Free software development is often not at all associated with money in any form. The non-discrimanatory clause thus makes only two reasonable schemes possible under RAND. One is a royalty free license scheme. This scheme already exists, and thus RAND is unnecessary. The second scheme would be for a true percentage based royalty. The only royalty that standardized patents should claim should be a percentage of profit. In this case, RAND should be more specifically worded, transforming "reasonable" to "based on percentage of profit". I hope you find my comments useful in your deliberations. Thank you for your consideration. Burt Betchart -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE7t1dSci2H3o+rj7MRAvJfAJ9Yljpxu2ygXVOZ4abporUpeI09EwCgjmr+ m0r8QAd5ni7rAqWPCtEi/fc= =XdQM -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 13:30:37 UTC