Re: RAND Patents: A great thing

"Alex Simons" <alexsi@microsoft.com> wrote:

> A short note to express my strong support for the RAND patent changes
> proposed.
>
> Patents are a critical part of our Intellectual Property system and a
> key underpinning of our capitalist economy.

And W3C is about *World Wide* web consortium.
World Wide mean that your economy isn't the only one existing in this
world.

> Remove patents and you remove the incentives for people to
> invent/create new IP.  Why create > new IP when you have to risk it as
> part of the W3C procedures? 

Users want interoperability between product. By allowing RAND type
license, you kill the ability of individual and small company to embrace
a given standard.

How many people wouldn't have been able to pay a license fee to
implement a standard. Think about the concequence it would have on
interoperability between differents systems.

From the W3C goal section, I can read :

   1.  Universal Access: To make the Web accessible to all by promoting
technologies that take into account the vast differences in culture,
education, ability, material resources, and physical limitations of
users on all continents;

   2. Semantic Web : To develop a software environment that permits each
user to make the best use of the resources available on the Web;

   3. Web of Trust : To guide the Web's development with careful
consideration for the novel legal, commercial, and social issues raised
by this technology.


From my point of view, 
allowing fee-based standards is completly against all of this and will
simply allow big company to kill theses goal.

> Instead, the W3C should uphold, protect and encourage patents as they
> create and support true innovation by providing tremendous positive 
> economic incentives.

This kind of license would only encourage monopoly... 
Something you seem to know well.

-- 
Yoann Vandoorselaere
http://prelude.sourceforge.net

Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 03:46:35 UTC