- From: William E. \ <haplo@majere.epithna.com>
- Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 14:16:02 -0400 (EDT)
- To: <www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org>
First in refernce to the areas that were singled out in the Response document. A requirement for disclosure: This is an absolute must, no Person(s) or corporation should ever be allowed to propose something to be considered as a defined standard without first telling the rest of the public what they might potentially gain from the patent. However this should be further extended to specify that they can not after acceptance EVER claim to have any onwership or patent of the standardized ideas that was not disclosed prior to the acceptance of the standard. By this I mean that should a company sponsor a new standard and then at a later time aquire another company, or individual who has developed relating tech they can't make a claim to royalties. Procedure for launching activities RF: Procedure for launching activities RAND: I will be honest for a moment and admit that I am an individual who is on the side of the individual and think's that corporations and big business should stay out of these procedings. To that end I firmly believe that if something is to be proposed as a standard then it MUST be unencumbered of any restrictions to its use by the public as a whole. I know from my job in the Technical world, where my company does business and must pay Royalties and licences that RAND to many of these patent holders may very well fall far outside what an individual or even small startup development team can afford. Please consider cases such as Apache Web server(by far the must pervasive server on the internet). If a new standard for the http protocol should be introduced, and it requires tech from some patent owned by a large corporation, how does that get paid for so it can be developed into the Apache software? I oppose any fees on the things that are required to work in the growing/evolving web. Web, infact internet standards as a whole must remain free to use and contribute into as whole. To do otherwise would signal the death of open source development, which is the bedrock upon which the internet and the W3C's very existance is founded. It should be a provision that anything that becomes a standard for the development of the internet, and related technologies that the proposers and all members of W3C give up all rights to royalties, and infact that this technologies patent and copyright restrictions are lifted as of the acceptance of the standards proposal. The technology from that point forward released into the public domain. Money should be made from selling the implimentation of ideas, not the concepts themselves. William E. Dunn Jr. 508-832-6139 Home 508-898-7125 Work haplo@epithna.com
Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 14:20:08 UTC