New patent policy

• From: Ravi Nanavati <ravi_n@mit.edu>
• Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 11:25:54 -0500
• To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
• Message-ID: <3BB74792.5000308@mit.edu>

I think the proposed patent policy at:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/patent-policy/
has at least two disturbing features:

1. A new patent licensing model "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory Licensing" 
(called RAND). A RAND license (quoting from the proposed policy) "may be 
conditioned on payment of reasonable, non-discriminatory royalties or fees". 
This would effectively prevent open-source implementation of a W3C standard that 
had patents licensed under RAND terms.

2. The disclosure requirements for patents only require that companies make 
their patents available on RAND terms. This rewards companies who "discover" 
relevant patents late in the standards process because they still get to charge 
royalties for the use of those patents.

I would urge that this new patent policy not be adopted.

  - Ravi Nanavati

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 12:28:49 UTC