- From: Anant Sahai <sahai@MIT.EDU>
- Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 00:07:05 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
- cc: sahai@alum.MIT.EDU
The world wide web using community is better served when innovators world wide can implement the w3c standards in a variety of embodiments. As the history of computing has shown us, true innovations have come from the work of researchers, students, hobbyists, and even people employed by commercial enterprises. The only way to allow the free exchange of ideas and the building upon each other's work is to allow all of these groups of individuals to participate on a truly level playing field. A requirement for royalty free licenses given to all implementors by any patent holder who submits proposals is the way that this can be achieved. So called RAND licensing discriminates against all but those employed by commercial enterprises, and even there my own experience has shown that people are wary of implementing somebody else's patented standard. When I have students, I would like them to be able to innovate freely if their work has anything to do with the WWW. Therefore, I urge you to reject the proposed RAND terms and substitute RF requirements instead. Even non-standard innovations require a freely implementable standard platform to build upon. Such a platform would effectively be outlawed by RAND terms. Sincerely, Anant Sahai
Received on Friday, 12 October 2001 00:07:06 UTC