- From: Shawn Stamps <sstamps@nexvs.net>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 14:33:35 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Greetings, As an ISP, Internet software developer, and a longtime Internet user/guru, I fully oppose the inclusion of ANY patented technologies into ANY standard ANYWHERE under ANY circumstances, unless the patent holder has effectively relinquished any claims to royalties and/or licenses (your current "RF" model) to said technology. I am not a lawyer (thank the gods), so let me put into simple words that any COMMON MAN can understand concerning what WILL happen if you implement this senseless and unnecessary proposal: 1) The Internet was founded, has grown to its current state, and will continue to grow and expand based on FREE and OPEN (read: non-IP encumbered) development of its core protocols. Whether that future growth comes to be through the use of open and "free" standards that are established through the humanitarian work of standards bodies who understand this fact -or- "de facto" standards created and supported by individuals outside of the established standards bodies to spite their ill-conceived support of IP-encumbered standards, it will continue to grow. 2) This "Patent Inclusion" working group is obviously headed up by large corporate members whose interest is plain to see. The public at large and the small corporations' interest is obviously nowhere to be found. Hopefully, my voice and that of others like me WILL be heard and represented by someone before this travesty goes any further. 3) Patents, in their present state, are "broken". They need to be used LESS, not MORE. Effective litmus tests for obviousness are never met today (I doubt they even exist). In addition, patents (in the US) are now valid on such things as business methods and software implementations. This is wrong and MUST be stopped. As a small developer, I do not have the resources necessary to examine whether I am infringing on someone's IP/Patent when I sit down and implement an idea of my own from scratch. As far as I am concerned, *I* am the creator of the IP, but I can never be sure that I won't stumble across someone's ill-gotten patent landmine when I go to publish/sell my hard work. It is a travesty; a miscarriage of justice so gross, that I KNOW it harms the continued expansion of knowledge in Science and the Useful Arts; something which is CONTRARY to the purpose of having patents in the first place. 4) When a patented technology becomes a standard, it becomes more than a simple government-granted monopoly in return for publicizing the details of the idea patented; it becomes a "government" MANDATED monopoly, REQUIRING all implementors of the standard to pay the patent holder, just to create a competitive product. An analogy would be if a company patented a way to compute income tax and the government decided to require by law that everyone who pays income tax use this company's "process" and, thus, license their IP to compute and pay the tax. The only difference is that a standard does not have the weight of legal enforcement (ie, through the use of deadly force) to support it. 5) In effect, what you are proposing will lower the standards process to the level of market competition. An established standard from an international standards-setting body (not an industry version of same) is treated by most implementors as almost a "law"; the only difference being that it isn't enforced with weapons. As such, since an implementor cannot be compelled to use a standard by deadly force, that person or group can choose to create/utilize a "de facto" standard which gets around the IP restrictions on the established standard. 6) Standards exist to harmonize implementations of a particular idea or process and should ALWAYS strive to be open and free in order to allow widespread adoption and ease of implementation. Burdening them with IP, patents in particular, will lower their usefulness and force competing de facto standards (with open and free licensing or Public Domain terms) to come into existence, thus requiring vendors to support multiple standards. This will erode the effectiveness of the original standard (and, hence, the point of establishing a standard (or having a standard-setting body) in the first place). 7) As an Internet software developer and implementor, my reaction to IP-encumbered standards WILL BE to create and propagate such competing de facto standards, not only to allow myself to create the necessary tools that I need unencumbered, but to fight this gross abomination of the PURPOSE of the standards-setting process. 8) The Internet is a dynamic, redundant, self-healing phenomenon. It, by design, reroutes around obstacles, both technical and ideological. It WILL, with the help of myself and MILLIONS of people like me, route around the effects of this proposed waste of braintrust if it is implemented. BANK on it. Regards, Shawn Stamps President Omega Microsystems, Inc. Nexus Internetworking Services Canton, GA, USA
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 14:37:31 UTC