Please, no patented material in W3C standards

I believe the case of the PC-Memory industry is instructive.  Because the JEDEC
(their "W3C") allowed a member company (Rambus) to put patented material into
a public standard (SDRAM), now several companies in the council have been
threatened by Rambus to either pay licensing fees or face litigation.  At least
one company has stood up to Rambus and the courts have started to agree.

The W3C must require that any technologies it adopts as standards have either
no patents or have a blanket allowance for the use of the patented material
WITHOUT fee.

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 19:54:03 UTC