Comments on 'W3C Royalty-Free Patent Policy Last Call Working Draft'

Hi,

I'm writing this email to give my comments on the W3C Royalty-Free Patent 
Policy Last Call Working Draft published at 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-patent-policy-20021114/

Overall, the draft looks good, but there are a few issues that I have problems 
with / whish to comment on.


In section 3. W3C Royalty-Free (RF) Licensing Requirements point 3 you say 
"may be limited to implementations of the Recommendation, and to what is 
required by the Recommendation;"

What is the point of giving a license to use what is in the recommendation, 
but limited to what is required to the recommendation.  If I implement the 
recommendation in some software, then I would expect that people should be 
able to take my implementation and use it in any other piece of software that 
is (possibly) not related to what the recommendation requires... Say I 
develop a web-browser implementing the recommendation, and someone wishes to 
take my code and embed it in a device that reads web-pages aloud to people, 
or in a searchengine - I would like to allow them to do that, and also to 
further distribute my code with their modifications. But they cannot do that 
if the Licence only permits implementation according to what is required by 
the recommendation.  (I hope that makes sense, english is not my native 
language).


In section 4.2 Disclosure Contents point 1 you say "   1.  the patent number, 
but need not mention specific claims".

What is the reason for this?  To me it would make perfect sense to require 
that specific claims are disclosed. Isn't the whole point of a disclosure 
statement to be able to identify possible claims? why not require that these 
be disclosed imidiately?


Best regards,

Jesper Juhl

Received on Tuesday, 7 January 2003 03:56:58 UTC