- From: David Wright <ichbin@shadlen.org>
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 03:48:09 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
The goal of patent law is to provide economic incentives, in the form of monopoly rents, for the development of new technologies. If such incentives were unnecessary for the development of new technologies, the public good would clearly best be served without these monopoly rents. When asking whether the W3C should endorse patented technologies as web standards, we should therefore ask ourselves: ARE MONOPOLY RENTS NECESSARY TO SPUR THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNET STANDARDS? History's answer to this question is clear: NOT AT ALL Every internet standard which has survived in the long run has been essentially patent-free: TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, etc... By way of contrast, essentially every propriatry standard has eventually fallen by the wayside (e.g. Token Ring, Appletalk, NetBIOS). GIF and RSA could be sited as exceptions, but note that, as soon as the relevant patent-holders began to enforce their rights, groups formed spontaneously to develop superior, patent-free alternatives (e.g. PNG and Blowfish). Given this argument, one is forced to conclude that the W3C's RAND proposal is meant to serve its corporate members' interests rather than the public good. This is unfortunate, if understandable. But this attempt is misguided, because even the logic of profit maximization alone should still lead one to reject the RAND proposal! Why? Because history shows there is plenty of money to be made in internet industries, but there is very little money to be made on internet standards. Indeed, the attempt make profits on the second can only hinder the growth that fuels the much large profit growth from the first. So please, whether out of altruism or selfishness, reject propriatary internet standrards!
Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2001 06:48:35 UTC