Proposed patent Policy problem - i.e. Field of Use clause

  The proposed patent policy has atleast one flaw in it that could cause
serious repercussions accross the web and around the world.  The field of
use restriction that would allow a patent holder to restrict the field of
use of the free grant of use of patent could allow people and/or companies
to release supposedly free standards while severly restricting their public
use, and thereby restricting the usability of the web by reducing the source
of software for a specfic use to a single vendor.
  It has always been my understanding that your organization was dedicated
to providing open standards that promote free use of the web and competition
in the market rather than closed or restricted standards that require
licensing fees to use, thus  supporting a free competetion model rather than
a monopolistic model.  This proposed patent policy as it currently exists
does not seem to support this and needs to be rewritten.

Andy Farnsworth
Senior Interwoven Architech

Received on Tuesday, 7 January 2003 06:08:39 UTC