- From: Ray Benjamin <raybenjamin13@home.com>
- Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 14:41:11 -0600
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- Cc: Mike Curtis <mecurti@us.ibm.com>, Marco@marcorp.win.net, Annette Receiver <ARecev@aol.com>, Beth Ubele <bubele@abovomarketing.com>
I am opposed to the RAND license proposed in the patent policy for a number of reasons. 1) It can be used to block new standards that might compete with a proprietary standard developed by the member -- by filing patents on parts of the new standard, as it is developed, a member of the working group can effectively kill a standard by refusing to allow licensing of it's technology. 2) Increasing the cost of doing business on the Web -- It seems that any member corporation could insure that it gets automatic revenues from each and every standard that it works on, by developing and patenting technology used for that standard. With that incentive, why would a company ever fail to file patents on any and all ideas submitted to the working group? 3) Cost of participating in the standards process -- This policy also requires all members of the W3C to license all technology required to implement standards. This move, since it requires that a company be willing to commit to spend an unknown amount of money ahead of time, just to participate as a member of the W3C, will serve to further restrict the membership in the W3C to large companies. 4) There is no definition of "payment of reasonable, non-discriminatory royalties or fees", so there is no real limitation on the fees that a company can charge as long as they can conjure some sort of argument that makes them appear "reasonable". 5) The proposal states: "So it is especially important that the Recommendations covering lower-layer infrastructure be implementable on an RF basis. Recommendations addressing higher-level services toward the application layer may have a higher tolerance for RAND terms." I believe that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between lower-layer infrastructure and higher-level services. XML was originally intended only as a replacement for HTML and has grown into the enabling technology for a slew of additional standards. W3C Working Group member companies will have a strong incentive to classify every project as part of higher-level services, in the hopes that the standard they work on will become the basis for a great deal of additional work. 6) Whether to use a standard as the basis for a new standard will be affected by whether the existing standard is RF or RAND. Members who hold a stake in the standard will push for it's use, while members that don't, will want to avoid it, and the costs associated with it. 7) Working Group members will start pushing to include as much patented material as possible in each standard, in order to maximize profits, rather than concentrate on developing the most appropriate solutions. I feel very strongly that ALL web standards published by the W3C should be royalty-free. I believe that members of the W3C should agree to offer a royalty-free license on patents that apply to standards developed by the organization as a condition of membership. The issue of patents and web standards is important. The standards for XPointer and XLink have already been threatened by patents by Sun and other companies. The W3C needs to have a clear policy on patents and standards, but I believe that it needs to be one that focuses primarily on advancing web technology, not padding the bank accounts of the participating members. There is an argument that companies that participate in the W3C need to recover the cost of the research and development they invest in the standards process. I believe that they already do, by avoiding the costs associated in dealing with dozens of competing standards. I seem to recall that's why the W3C was organized in the first place. The development of free and open standards governing web technology is absolutely vital to the advancement of the web. Adopting this sort of policy will slow the creation, acceptance and implementation of new technologies on the web. This policy will enrich a few large companies, while slowing the expansion of the web and the economic benefits that would bring to all of us. This policy is a bad idea. Thank you for your kind attention, Ray Benjamin raybenjamin@raybenjamin.com
Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 16:46:56 UTC