RE: Patents and public

Matthew Raymond [mailto:mattraymond@earthlink.net] wrote:
>   The process required to get on this mailing list was significantly
>non-trivial, and I by no means went into that process assured that I
>would be able to become an invited expert and post in this mailing list.

Hmm.  Then as chair, I'd like to ask you to detail that with me off-list, because that sounds broken to me.

>   The best first step would be to allow anyone to post on the HTML WG
>mailing list by just having them visit a web page that would be nothing
>more than a mailing list sign-up with an additional check box that says
>"I agree to the W3C Patent Policy". This would allow pretty much anyone
>to join in on the discussion while still offering legal protection
>against patent lawsuits.

Yes, I'd like that.

>   Another good step would be for several companies participating int
>this working group to form a patent review task force that would provide
>the legal resources necessary to perform full patent reviews on
>submitted materials and ideas, such as the mandated Ogg Theora codex
>issue. We could tentatively put feature in the spec but mark them as
>pending patent review, then indicate if they pass the review at a later
>date. I'm certain that the combined patent resources of Apple, the
>Mozilla Foundation, Opera Software, Google and Microsoft would be
>substantial.

As previously discussed - there's no such thing as a thorough patent review.

-C

Received on Sunday, 15 April 2007 01:35:10 UTC