Royalty-Free Patent Policy: Request for Change in Section 3, Item 3

Dear W3C

Thanks for the wonderful effort to create unencumbered, Royalty-Free
Standards.

However, the standard in its current shape [1], has a critical flaw which
would hinder innovative use of W3C standards in the future. I fully agree
with the view taken by Free Software Foundation on this case [2].

---
Item 3 of section 3 says that the royalty-free license may "may be limited
to implementations of the Recommendation, and to what is required by the
Recommendation". That is a "field of use" restriction.
---

The W3C standards have helped to revolutionize the way computers are used
today. For example, HTTP as a standard is used not only for communications
between web-servers and browsers - as was initially intended. HTTP is used
for various innovative applications like 'e-book readers', 'help
applications', appliances etc, which were not thought of as "required by
the Recommendation".

Thus if the W3C Royalty Free Patent Policy, in its current shape is passed,
it would hinder the developers of free as well as commercial software from
developing innovative products or applications or services using W3C
standards, thus defeating the whole idea of Standards.

With this in mind, I request that W3C reconsider and reword its position on
'Section 3, Item 3' of the Draft Policy [1] to enable 'Royalty-Free Patent
Policy' - true to the spirit of the title.

regards
venu

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-patent-policy-20021114
[2] http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html
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Venugopal M
Consultant / vMoksha Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Phone: +91-80-5053500   Extn: 276
DID:     +91-80-5053676
WWW: http://www.vmoksha.com

Received on Tuesday, 7 January 2003 01:52:47 UTC