Re: Patent pending: Network-based classified information systems.

I would like to say "thanks" to the people mentioned below who helped
with the discovery of prior art in the area of schemas for structured
indexable, displayable structured data in the body of web pages.

It appears that this area, (including META schemas) is a field littered
with the ruins of good ideas. The failure of early contributers to
protect their intellectual property through the use of the Law, that is
by patents, has resulted in the field falling into the public domain.
(At the time, (~1995) it was less clear that the Law offered patent
protection on this area of technology.) This has dramatically increased
the business risk to the smaller organisation of developing technology
to implement the schemas. Now only larger organisations with substantial
market muscle will have the amount of risk capital required to make the
schemes viable. However, they probably have better things to do with
their money, unless their interests are threatened, so I imagine it will
be a while before any of these schemes are implemented and presented in
a way that is useful to the general public although some niche
implementations may emerge. I imagine the early contributers will not
see any reward for their efforts except perhaps an inner glow. Inner
glow notwithstanding, I think that is unfortunate.

Kind regards,
Dudley Mills,
30 Hutchison Crescent, Kambah, ACT 2902, Australia.
phone/fax: +61-2-6296-2639
email: dudmills@ozemail.com.au
web: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dudmills/


Many thanks to:

James Whitescarver <jim@njit.edu>
For suggesting ICE (Internet Content Exchange)
http://www.redherring.com/insider/1998/0211/ice.html

Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@w3.org>
For suggesting IDML
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1996Aug/0187

Paul Francis <francis@slab.ntt.co.jp>
For worldly wise comments about patents.

Albert Lunde <albert-lunde@nwu.edu>
For bringing IETF's page on intellectual property to our notice.
http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/ipr.html

Nick Arnett <narnett@verity.com>
For the observation that only the narrowest IP remains in this area.

Jeff Leane <leane@emerge.com>
For suggesting Desai's Cover Page
http://www.cs.concordia.ca/%7Efaculty/bcdesai/semantic-header.html
Koster's ALIWEB
http://www.nexor.com/aliweb/aliweb.html
Harvest
http://harvest.transarc.com/

Joseph M. Reagle Jr. <reagle@w3.org>
For the W3C view of Intellectual Property re tags.

Received on Thursday, 26 February 1998 20:23:40 UTC