- From: Alex Dark <adark@appliedtheory.com>
- Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 08:05:26 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
This is a difficult dilemma for the W3C, which (I agree) has to take some sort of action. I would only say two things about it: 1. It seems like the opportunity to choose between royalty-free and RAND-style licenses for this or that recommendation will really bring the lions in for the kill. Business interests will have a strong incentive to get representatives on to technical committees to argue for RAND-style licensing schemes. Imagine having your patented technology, some laughable thing like Sun's supposed patent on a part of XPointer, recognized in a W3C recommendation. Ok, so the W3C has this problem under the current regime, this proposal will remove uncertainty, but it won't eliminate the power of patent interests to undermine the process. 2. I am a developer who grew up on the WWW: I have depended my entire career on the fact that anyone, anywhere could implement W3C recommendations or implement tools to implement these recommendations. (And unlike ISO, you can even get the recommendations at no charge!) This was a historical success on the part of the W3C that turned the WWW (and the Internet) into a piece of the public infrastructure. So I find it quite foreign to hear talk of licensing a technical recommendation. Such recommendations are extremely limited in their utility. If the W3C goes down that path, it becomes just another industry association promoting standardization between a set of vendors. That's far less than what it has accomplished in the past, and many such "standards" die in the course of time. Examples here would be the WAP Forum; the fact that they were reinventing infrastructure in part to control the copyrights and the standards process makes me quite dubious of the long-term viability of their standards. And I'm not aware of any major IETF standard that is encumbered by patent licenses of a similar kind (the IETF is mentioned by the patent work group as an example of a standards body that deals with RAND licenses). Ironically, the W3C is getting heat on this patent recommendation because it is (happily) the victim of its own successes. Alx Dark, Ph.D., Senior Consultant AppliedTheory Corporation The views expressed are my own.
Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 11:05:16 UTC