Re: ECC and Patent Policy

Hi Hal, 

this point was already taken up by the PSIG and led to the Patent Policy FAQ 
entry:
http://www.w3.org/2003/12/22-pp-faq.html#outside-normative-ref

32. Can a W3C Recommendation normatively refer to technology developed outside 
W3C with licensing terms that differ from those of the W3C Patent Policy?

Yes. W3C Recommendations may include normative references to standards or 
technologies developed outside of W3C. However, the Working Group should keep 
in mind the importance of royalty-free implementations of Web standards. In 
the event it becomes clear that the licensing status of those externally-
developed technologies could become a barrier to implementation of the 
technology according to the W3C Royalty-Free (RF) Licensing Requirements, W3C 
may choose not to publish the document or may launch a PAG.

As I said in our private conversation before you've sent your idea to the 
list, your interpretation opens an option. The Patent Policy is full of holes 
where people can try to escape the RF goals. But we have to respect the 
overall RF goal when searching the meaning of the words of the patent policy. 
With words taken absolute and in isolation, one can justify everything out of 
a given text, provided the text is long enough.

The conclusion line that you found was introduced to help with the referencing 
of standards from organizations with a different licensing scheme, e.g. ISO 
with a RAND policy, but where there is nothing known about encumbrance. 

In our case, we know about the encumbrance. Even if it would be a mere 
reference, it would import an known encumbrance into the XML Signature 
specification. The Group has decided that this is unacceptable and tries to 
resolve the issue with all options on the table. We tried to convince 
RIM/Certicom to provide RF and failed. Remaining options are to trigger a PAG, 
or to leave ECC out.

Best, 

Rigo

On Thursday 26 August 2010 16:07:21 Hal Lockhart wrote:
> It was pointed out to me that the W3C Patent Policy, Section 8.2 says:
> 
> ----
> "The following are expressly excluded from and shall not be deemed to
>  constitute Essential Claims:"
> 
> [...]
> 
> "2. claims which would be infringed only by:"
> 
> [...]
> 
> "o the implementation of technology developed elsewhere and merely
>  incorporated by reference in the body of the Recommendation." ----
> 
> It seems to me that this is exactly the case in signature and encryption
>  1.1. The actual use of ECDSA is specified in a NIST standard, which
>  appears as a normative reference in the W3C documents.
> 
> I actually do not understand why this exclusion exists, but it appears to
>  me that the specification as written is compliant with the W3C Patent
>  Policy, regardless of what Certicom does.
> 
> Was the W3C trying to achieve something more than compliance with the
>  Patent Policy?
> 
> Hal
>

Received on Friday, 27 August 2010 10:02:30 UTC