- From: Thomas Strauss <thst@strauss-it.de>
- Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:03:58 +0200
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I double the proposals of Chris Lilley (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Oct/0060.html) and want to add some comments. In general: Any w3c Recommendation has to be implementable under any open source license, which is accepted as compatible to GPL or BSD License. to Chapter 7.1.1 The need to mention claims is essential. Otherwise the working group may see itself swamped with patent claims which are void. "Members making disclosures need not provide the licensing terms on which the essential claims would be available" replace "not" by "to". If the working group does not know the licensing terms, it cannot decide whether working around the patent is appropriate. The Term "Essential Claim": It is not acceptable to have claims on patents which are filed up to one year after the first public working draft. The PWD is clearly prior art to the patent. This will lead to RAMBUS-like disasters. An essential claim should only be possible on patents which are filed up to the date of the first public working draft. Any claim of patents of a later filling are void claims. Please clear this up. Why this long term AFTER the first public draft. License Mode of a Working Group: Every WG should start out as RF. The change to RAND should be publically discussed. Furthermore I wish the fact respected that many jurisdictions in the world declare software patents as well as patents on business methods as not applicable. So a RAND WG should explicitly state under which jursidictions, which patents are valid. So that people in Software Patent free states can take advatage of a free implementation of the recommendation. The license is not allowed to be uniform in that respect. Chapter 5.3 Procedure for changing licensing mode of an existing working group. Does this talk about existing recommendations as well? Does this allow the changing of the license mode of say, the xml working group? This should not at all be possible. It would generate the possibility to render any implementation of a recommendation as illegal. You need security before you start a large project. If I cant tell how much Royalties a recommendation will cost me in the future, I cannot implement anything. The whole paragraph should be replaced by the statement, that any changing of the licensing mode of an existing WG is only possible from RAND to RF not vice versa. -- Thomas Strauß | Mörfelder Landstr. 74 | 60598 Frankfurt/Main | +49-696-616-9801 |
Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 17:03:07 UTC