Re: [www-patentpolicy-comment] <none>

>
> Historically, companies in the IT Industry have agreed to licensed patents
> under Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms when participating in
> formal standards setting activities. The policy of licensing patents under
> RAND terms and conditions has allowed our best technical individuals to
> work together without becoming burdened by patent issues.  This approach
> encourages participants to contribute more of their patented technology
> resulting in the adoption of the best technical solutions. Allowing the
> standards activities to proceed in this manner, while moving the discussion
> of patent licenses outside of the standards developing organization,
> permits company-to-company patent dialogue and encourages individualized
> solutions to patent license issues.

It is very nice that this would make companies communicate better. But you are
missing the bigger picture.
What about individual open source/free software developers. Does this make
their development efforts easier. On the contrary, if oss/fs-developers need to
pay royalties or other fees for software they want to be standards-compliant,
they effectively cannot.
Linux would not possible if this would happen, and I doubt IBM is interested in
negative growth for Linux.


/Aschwin

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 06:33:27 UTC