Re: W3C patent license policy question

On 2 Aug 2011, at 3:01 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:

Hi Ben,

Thanks for writing.

> I'm writing as a volunteer for Xiph.Org, developer of free multimedia
> technology like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.  We're part of an IETF audio codec
> effort called "Opus" that may soon end up in the W3C through the
> WebRTC/RTC-Web effort.

What does "end up in W3C" mean precisely? Does it mean that a Working Group would start with the IETF text as a contribution?

> At the IETF, we have licensed several patents related to Opus under the
> strongest royalty-free license we could devise [1].  I think our license
> is similar to what the W3C expects.
> 
> How can we make sure that our license would be acceptable at the W3C?

Good question, but I think we need to understand the expectation more before finding the best solution. 

> We'd like to be sure it is, because we may start recommending it as a
> template for others interested in royalty-free licenses.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ben Schwartz
> 
> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1524/
> [2] http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/
> 
> P.S. I think there's a bug in the patent policy text.[3] Section 5.6 of
> the W3C patent policy ("may be suspended with respect to any licensee when
> licensor is sued by licensee")[3] is incompatible with the "non-normative
> summary"[4], which says "The license may require a royalty-free "grant
> back" or reciprocal licenses either to the original patent holder or to
> all other implementers".  I imagine that "or to all other implementors" is
> the actual intention.

The bullets of the summary are intended to align with section 5.6 as follows:

Provision 	1 in 5.6 is 1 in summary.
Provision 3 in 5.6 is 2 in summary.
Provision 4 in 5.6 is 3 in summary. 
Provision 5 in 5.6 is 4 in summary.
Provision 6 in 5.6 is 5 in summary.
Provision 7 in 5.6 is 6 in summary.

Your comment associates 5.6 #6 with Summary #3 but those aren't intended to be associated. 

In light of the above pairings, does it still seem like a bug? I'm happy to update the summary to fix a bug but I am not sure to understand it yet.

Ian

> 
> [3] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Requirements
> [4] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/05-patentsummary.html
> 

--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)    http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel:                                      +1 718 260 9447

Received on Tuesday, 2 August 2011 21:39:39 UTC