Re: [Please review] Revised IPR section of UAWG charter

This message does not indicate an objection to the language offered, per_se.

Alternate language is offered as a possible improvement in the exposition.

The alternative offered does not make, as I understand it, any substantive change in the charter as compared with the immediate prior proposal.

Al

Proposed alternative language:

<blockquote>

The intention in chartering this group is that the products of this working group be implementable without incurring royalty obligations.  To this end, it will operate as described in the W3C <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-patent-practice-20020124">Current Patent Practice</a> (24 January 2002).

Under existing W3C Process requirements, Working Group participants disclose patent claims by sending email to <patent-issues@w3.org>.  This disclosure is defined in the W3C <a href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/">Process Document</a>, and discussed further under the Current Patent Practice Note cited above.

Patent policy is an active area of current work within the Consortium.  Future steps taken by the Consortium to clarify patent policy and practice may require some clarification of this aspect of this charter, but should not alter the basic goal for this group of producing technology which is readily implementable on a royalty-free basis.

</blockquote>

Note(1):  The cited Current Patent Practice only defines how a Royalty Free WG works, so it is not necessary here to confuse people with an unnecessary Term of Art.  One doesn't have to look up Royalty Free Working Group in the Current Patent Practice to find the right process description.  It's the whole document.  Besides, if you try to string search for "Royalty Free Working Group" you lose.  You have to search for "Royalty Free (RF) Working Group."  The phrase is only used once, and never without the embedded symbol definition.  See Aside(3) below.


Note(2):  While the direct reference to the Process Document is not a substantive change because the Current Patent Practice does make it clear that that is what defines the disclosure rules, because the Process Document is a "higher status" document than the Current Patent Practice Note, it is good to make the fact that this is part of the pre-existing requirements and not something introduced by the Current Patent Practice itself.  To this end, the original publication defining this requirement should be directly cited here and not leave the reader to have to read the intervening lower-status document to understand this.

So there is not a substantive change, in that the requirements on how the Working Group operates either way are the same.  But this brings the exposition in the charter more in line with best practice for writing formal normative writs: specifications and charters.

Aside(3):  One of the things that I have learned lately is that some browsers [and redirects in HTTP] still don't implement #fragment references correctly.  To work around this, the language of a citation, either in the link text or in the obvious context thereof, should provide a text string which succeeds when used as a string-searching key to get you to the right place within the document identified by the URI without the #fragment.

 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa/2002Jan/thread.html#6

-- immediate prior proposal

At 02:00 PM 2002-02-21 , you wrote:
>Dear UAWG,
>
>In response to concerns expressed by some participants
>about the language in the IPR section of the revised
>UAWG charter [1], the language has been changed to
>the simplified in referring to the Current Patent
>Practice document of 24 Jan 2002. From the charter:
>
><blockquote>
>W3C promotes an open working environment. Whenever possible, 
>technical decisions should be made unencumbered by intellectual 
>property right (IPR) claims.
>
>This is a Royalty Free Working Group, as described in the 24 January 
>2002 version of W3C's Current Patent Practice.
>
>Working Group participants disclose patent claims by sending email 
>to <patent-issues@w3.org>; please see Current Patent Practice for 
>more information about disclosures.
>
>If and when W3C institutes a more formal patent policy, the UAWG 
>charter will be revised, following the recommendations of the Patent 
>Policy Working Group, in a manner consistent with the IPR goals of 
>the current charter: that the UAWG produce deliverables that ought 
>to be implementable royalty-free.
></blockquote>
>
>Please indicate any objections to this language by 28 Feb 2002
>at 2pm ET. Thank you,
>
>   - Ian
>
>[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/charter-20011218
>-- 
>Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
>Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447
>

Received on Saturday, 23 February 2002 12:17:41 UTC