Re: New Hewlett Packard patent may be a barrier to Semantic Web services adoption

HP was a W3C member during those years and therefore needed to comply with the W3C Patent Policy.  They would have had the opportunity to disclose any patents and patent applications relevant to these technologies.

The current W3C Patent Policy was adopted 5 February 2004 and may be read at [1].

Regards,
Dave
--
http://about.me/david_wood

[1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/


On Jul 31, 2013, at 15:15, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:

> Dear all:
> 
> Yesterday, Hewlett Packard has been granted a patent on "Policy Enforcement":
> 
> 	http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8498959.html
> 	http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8498959.pdf
> 
> As far as I can see, it heavily constrains the commercial exploitation of research done in the Semantic Web / Semantic Web Services community from 2001-2009. 
> 
> So if you worked on policies in the context of Semantic Web Services or Semantic Business Process Management before November 2009, it may be worthwhile to check whether the patent claims inventions that you can prove to have been prior art at that time. 
> 
> This may be particularly relevant for the organizers and contributors to the various policy workshops co-located with ISWC/ESWC conferences.
> 
> I am not familiar with the legal process, but if you feel this patent claims what was already publicly known / discussed at conferences back then, please ask your employer or legal department to challenge the patent. It may otherwise put the usage of SWS in business applications at risk.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Martin
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
> 
> e-mail:  hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
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>