Re: Patent Policy issues...

On 13 Mar 2012, at 5:38 AM, Arthur Barstow wrote:

> On 3/13/12 6:23 AM, ext Carr, Wayne wrote:
>> But later is not the same people.  A CG creates a Community Spec where a participant has personal knowledge of patents that contain essential claims.  A WG adopts the Community Spec.  Someone gets sued for implementing.
>> 
>> The disclosure rules are lightweight.  They involve personal knowledge, not any patent search.  They prevent the situation that someone knows technology being added to a spec is encumbered but the group producing the spec does not.
>> 
>> For the reason Charles mentioned, there should be a disclosure requirement in CGs ( based on personal knowledge like for W3C members and TRs).
> 
> Yeah I agree. It seems like a relatively large bug in the CG PP to not require disclosures for CG specs.
> 
> IJ - why was this done?

Hi all,

A disclosure obligation is considered a burden. Because we were trying to facilitate participation, we did our best to reduce burdens to participation. 

One idea that was discussed was "If you don't sign the FSA you have a disclosure obligation." There was resistance even to that proposal.

So for the time being we have no disclosure obligation for CG reports. 

Note, however, that if a CG report moves to the Rec track, then disclosure obligations kick in as part of the W3C Patent Policy.

Ian

--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)    http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel:                                      +1 718 260 9447

Received on Tuesday, 13 March 2012 13:46:52 UTC