Proposed Patent Policy

In the past 30 years, the major Internet protocols and standards have
succeeded because they were open and unencumbered by intellectual
property monopolies.  The key is that standards which everyone must
adhere to are _not_ owned or controlled by any individual or
corporation.  The proposed RAND licencing option for standards
introduces such control.  Let's also be clear about the practical effect
on open source and free software projects:  They will not be able to use
these standards.

I believe that the W3C should require free licencing from patent holders
on working groups for all new standards.

John Panzer

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 12:53:31 UTC