The proposal about allowing patents on W3C standards would take away the value of these.

Dear sir/lady:

I am opposed to the proposal of allowing patents on W3C
standards. The proposal of RAND licensing is quite vague
and there is no real need for allowing these patents.

RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) is vague
concept. There is no bound on the amount of money that can be asked
for a license. There is no obligation of disclosing the exact
licensing conditions in the standard. These policy would give a
tremendous advantage for those that are members of the standards
committee. Market conditions what force everyone to adopt a
standards would appear.

Furthermore, there is no real need for allowing these patents.
W3C standards do not cover complex compression algorithms,
like ISO or ITU (MP3, for instance) where there is a substantial
research work. W3C standards cover, in the best case, simple
creative interesting ideas for which there is no real need
for patents.

The existing experience of the W3C has been quite positive.  W3C
standards have provided the world with an open infrastructure of
communications. There is no reason to change what works.

However, if finally W3C decided to adopt the policy of allowing
disclosed patents on standards, it would be essential to require the
disclosure of the licensing conditions in the text of every standard
so that the market the choice of refusing it if those conditions are
unfairly expensive. In this way, it is the market who decides what is
and what is not reasonable. In addition, it should be compulsory for
any member of a committee to disclose patents and pending applications
whose infringement is necessary for creating an implementation,
otherwise implicitly licensing for free that patents.

Thank you very much,
        Ramon

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:01:44 UTC