- From: John Gutierrez <jtgutier@ix.netcom.com>
- Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 00:39:56 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I'm going to make as clear as possible by quoting directly from Janet Daly's Response .... It appears the reasons behind the development of the draft is to answer the following question. "In a world where patents exist and may be used to constrain conformance to standards, how should W3C best proceed in order to accomplish its mission?" In order to minimize/eliminate the following possibility that.. "The Web community is not surprised by "submarine" patents whereby unsuspecting participants are forced to pay license fee after their participation in the creation of a Recommendation that they thought was unencumbered." An additional goal is to help with decision making: "The proposed policy is designed to promote better decisions through disclosure of information." The proposal's final intent as stated by Janet Daly is to: "It establishes a process that requires people to disclose to a Working Group that a specification in development may intersect with patented technology." If this is the real gist of the reasons/intent of the Draft, it seems simple to me: Either establish a process requiring disclosure or not. Make it simple. Although the W3C has had to deal with "apparent" intersecting patented technology, that fact will not go away. And, it doesn't even matter what other bodies are doing! It also doesn't matter what individual's or company want. The W3C's original goals are what's important. RAND is a land mine waiting to be stepped on. Section 4(e), Item 3 appears to allow a company to implement additional proprietary functionality to a technology after that technology has been incorporated into an adopted standard. That possibility invites control. Make it "May not be limited by current or future implementations of the Recommendation. There are 10,000 licenses out there already, couldn't the committee find one that might have worked? Get rid of the fees in Section 4(3), Item 5. Just change it to "May not be conditioned on payment of royalties or fees" Company's must be willing to share their technology for the common good of the WWW or not. That is the real bottom line. I believe that "If you keep it open and keep it free, it will keep on working". -- John Gutierrez jtgutier@ix.netcom.com
Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 03:40:13 UTC