RAND considered harmful

RAND Considered Harmful.

Mandatory royalty bound patents have no place in standards organizations
where the participants are supposedly cooperating with each other even
if it isn't for the good of the community.

Patents today are used as weapons of antagonism between corporations;
do not allow weapons to be used in the standards process.

The use of RAND patent licensing will cause the WWW and ultimately the
Internet to become a morass of interlocking patents. RF patent licensing
will become a ghettoized separate but "equal" standards process.

As others have said, the only "reasonable and non-discriminatory" fee
structure is zero.

It may only be an honest mistake that in the document

<http://www.w3.org/2001/08/16-PP-FAQ.html>

the word "comments" rather than correct word "comment" are used in
these addresses:

<www-patentpolicy-comments@w3.org>
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comments/>.

However, this means that many who have managed to find the FAQ document
will be unable to send comments or read the comments of others unless
they guess or stumble across the correct addresses. This has the same
appearance of possibly deliberate incompetance that the ICANN has show
in its own public feedback. That such a mistake, regardless of reason,
has existed for over fifty days in what is in effect a call for comments
document is shocking.

You may wish to check your web server and mail server logs to
check for those who wished to obtain more information on and comment on
the RAND patent licensing but were thwarted by the wrong addresses. It
could also be recommended that the comment period is too short and should be
extended, especially given this oversight.

If you are truly are looking for public feedback see resources such as
<http://slashdot.org/yro/01/09/30/1454216.shtml>
<http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-30-001-20-NW-CY>
<http://www.pfir.org/principles>
-- 
Tony Stieber <tstieber@visi.com>

Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 15:25:05 UTC