- From: Ted Bergeron <info@beebot.com>
- Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 09:01:14 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- Cc: wasp@webstandards.org
Dear W3C, I hope that you will consider the Unisys situation where they have finally enforced their claim on the LZW compression used in .GIF files. For years their claim laid dormant and now they are enforcing their claim (see http://burnallgifs.org/ ) So now a perfectly fine image format has to be thrown out because most web site owners cannot afford to pay Unisys the $5000 per site licensing fee to utilize .GIF images that were created with improperly licensed graphic programs. Everyone that uses the Internet has to pay for access to it in some way. If large companies are allowed to patent STANDARDS, this will result in increased costs in someway; like paying to access a web site just to read the content. And it will force developers back into creating hacks and work-arounds to avoid having to pay some royalty to a company that happens to own the patent on some way of building web pages. -- Hacks and work-arounds are exactly opposite to standards! Don't force developers to create a hack that becomes an "unwritten standard" just because we cannot afford to pay a royalty to use a STANDARD!!! Please reconsider. Standards are supposed to make the web a better place. Let the patents be held by companies for something UNIQUE that they create! NOT STANDARDS. Thank you for your time, - Ted Bergeron BeeBot Web Design info@beebot.com <mailto:info@beebot.com> <http://www.beebotwebdesign.com/> Visit BeeBot.com "Home of the Agent-E-Gram (tm)" and Agent Characters <http://www.beebot.com/>
Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 12:00:12 UTC