patent-response

Section 7: reasonable, for the purposes of avoiding standards that infringe 
on patents which require fees or registration of any sort.

Sections 4&5: W3C standards should at all times be implementable without 
the encumbrances of royalties. RF Mode is minimally acceptable; RAND mode 
will simply ensure that other unencumbered standards emerge. History has 
proven this so. RF mode should also require that any subsequent patents 
derived from the original patent also default into RF mode, making it a 
"viral" grant of patent rights.

One alternative approach that you have not contemplated in this document is 
the outright transference of relevant patent rights to an administrative 
body, such as the W3C itself, or  preferably (from my point of view) the 
FSF. As holders of "essential claims" patents, these organizations could 
then require the "liberation" of other ludicrous patent claims as royalty 
for use of W3C standards that require use of patents inside the W3C domain.

--------------
Alan Langford   jal@ambitonline.com
Ambit Perspectives      (416)621-9899

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 13:49:36 UTC