Question about section 4.1 of the W3C Patent Policy

Section 4.1 of the W3C Patent Policy [1] says:

[[
If any claims are made essential by the final Recommendation  
[PROCESS, section 7.1.1] as a result of subject matter not present or  
apparent in the latest public Working Draft [PROCESS, section 7.1.1]  
published within 90 days after the first public Working Draft, the  
participant may exclude these new Essential Claims, and only these  
claims, by using this exclusion procedure within 60 days after the  
publication of the Last Call Working Draft [PROCESS, section 7.4.2].  
After that point, no claims may be excluded. (Note that if material  
new subject matter is added after Last Call, then a new Last Call  
draft will have to be produced, thereby allowing another exclusion  
period for 60 days after that most recent Last Call draft.)
]]

Regarding the last sentence in the above paragraph:

1. Does embedding this sentence in parenthesis exempt the statement  
from being Normative text i.e. is this sentence Informative?

2. What does "allowing" mean in this context? For example does it  
mean "requiring". More specifically, if a document that has been  
published as a Last Call (LC) Working Draft (WD) is subsequently  
published as either a new WD or another LC WD, will there definitely  
be another new Call for Exclusions?

Regards,

Art Barstow
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Received on Monday, 18 December 2006 14:12:11 UTC