- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:50:33 -0700
- To: Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>
- Cc: Ben Meadowcroft <ben@benmeadowcroft.com>, "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>, "'HTML WG'" <public-html@w3.org>
On Apr 12, 2007, at 10:59 AM, Chris Wilson wrote: > Maciej Stachowiak wrote: >> The W3C has always had a policy of taking input from the general >> public via public mailing lists that impose no special obligations to >> subscribe. For example, the CSS working group accepts public comments >> on its drafts via www-style@w3.org, despite also having a completely >> private list. > > And if a commenter on the public list were suggesting a patentable > invention, I would expect the CSS WG to follow up with that > commenter to sign the patent policy. You might expect that, but I have never seen a W3C working group do such a thing, or even try to determine what might be a patentable invention. I personally don't even know how to judge if an idea is patentable, do you? >> Note also that whether something is covered by a patent may bear no >> relation to who suggested it. If I unwittingly suggest an idea that, >> for example, IBM has a patent on, the fact that Apple agreed to the >> patent policy affords no protection. > > That's never been the issue when I've brought up patent policy as a > concern. This isn't about the Eolas case, for example, and never > has been. The issue that patent policy protects against is Joe > Schmoe sending in a "good idea" that he knowingly has IP on (or > that his company has IP rights on), and it gets adopted - and then > he can sue the implementers. The provenance of any significant > contribution is important. It's true that this is remotely possible, but it actually seems less likely than unwittingly suggesting a feature where someone else holds the patent. The latter has happened before, but I don't know of any instance of your suggested scenario in the case of W3C standards. Applying the W3C patent policy also would not prevent someone from deliberately using a knowing or unknowing third party to inject something into the spec. I think the best way to mitigate risk is to get as many companies with large patent portfolios that are likely to affect the spec into the Working Group. I agree that having an IPR structure in place is a good thing, but we should not take it so far that we ignore public feedback. Regards, Maciej
Received on Thursday, 12 April 2007 21:50:50 UTC