- From: Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez <ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 20:01:42 +0200
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
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