Revised IPR statement from Eastman Kodak

Kodak have provided the following revised IPR statement for
SVG 1.0. The goal is to make their position more clear.

Dean

--

Kodak agrees to provide a RAND License (defined below)
for all Essential Claims to implementors of the SVG 1.0
Specification who grant a reciprocal RAND License to
Essential Claims for the SVG 1.0 Specification. Kodak
grants no license, either express or implied, to any
other patent, patent application, trade secret or other
intellectual property right. Kodak expressly reserves
all rights in its intellectual property.

Kodak does not believe it currently has any essential
claims that fall within the specification of the
Recommendation as currently understood and interpreted
by Kodak for implementors of SVG.  However, Kodak
hereby identifies U.S. Patent 5,459,819 and affirms
that in the event that any claim of this patent is
interpreted as an essential claim within the
specification of the Recommendation in its current or
later amended form, Kodak agrees to provide a RAND
License as set forth in the previous paragraph.

Kodak is not prepared to make a statement regarding any
other patents at this time. However, should we become
aware that another Kodak patent contains Essential
Claims with regard to the SVG 1.0 Specification, we
intend to disclose it.

The terms Essential Claims and RAND License are defined
below. These definitions are based on the July 6, 2001
W3C Patent Policy Framework Proposal. Note that section
(iv) in the definition of a RAND License below differs
from the corresponding section in the Framework
Proposal.

"Essential Claims" shall mean all claims in any patent
or patent application, in any jurisdiction in the
world, that a Member (or a licensor or licensee, with
reference to entities other than Members) owns, or
under which a Member (or a licensor or licensee) has
the right to grant licenses without obligation of
payment or other consideration to an unrelated third
party, that would necessarily be infringed by
implementation of the Recommendation. A claim is
necessarily infringed hereunder only when it is not
possible to avoid infringing it because there is no
non-infringing alternative for implementing the
required portions of the Recommendation. Existence of a
non-infringing alternative shall be judged based on the
state-of-the-art at the time the specification becomes
a Recommendation.

The following are expressly excluded from and shall not
be deemed to constitute Essential Claims:

(1) any claims other than as set forth above even if
contained in the same patent as Essential Claims; and

(2) claims which would be infringed only by

[a] portions of an implementation that are not required
by the Recommendation; or

[b] enabling technologies that may be necessary to make
or use any product or portion thereof that complies
with the Recommendation but are not themselves
expressly set forth in the Recommendation (e.g. an
image manipulation method such as algorithms for image
enhancement, color modification, digital file
formatting or image compression, construction of image
processing kernels or look-up tables, methods of
forming composite images using multiple SVG elements,
and the like); or

[c] the implementation of technology developed
elsewhere and merely incorporated by reference in the
body of the Recommendation.

For purposes of this definition, the Recommendation
shall be deemed to include only architectural and
interoperability requirements and shall not include any
implementation examples or any other material that
merely illustrates the requirements of the
Recommendation, or method or software that comprises a
series of steps for constructing a digital image or a
technique for obtaining a specific image result, such
as the construction of a filter for sharpening,
blurring, the definition of a matrix or look-up table
for color enhancement.

A RAND License shall mean a license that:

(i) shall be available to all implementers worldwide,
whether or not W3C Members;

(ii) shall extend to all Essential Claims owned or
controlled by the licensor and its Affiliates (except
as described below concerning license relating to
contributions);

(iii) may be limited to implementations of the
Recommendation and to what is required by the
Recommendation;

(iv) may be conditioned on a grant of a reciprocal
license on these same terms, to all Essential Claims
owned or controlled by the licensee and its Affiliates.
For example, this reciprocal license must be available
to all, and this reciprocal license may itself be
conditioned on a further reciprocal license (from all,
including, especially in the case of a license to a
Contribution, the original licensee). However, a
license does not qualify as a RAND license under this
definition if it requires that all licensees offer
licenses on a no-royalty basis to all other third
parties;

(v) may be conditioned on payment of reasonable, non-
discriminatory royalties or fees; and,

(vi) may not impose any further conditions or
restrictions on the use of any technology, intellectual
property rights, or other restrictions on behavior of
the licensee, but may include reasonable, customary
terms relating to operation or maintenance of the
license relationship such as the following: audit (when
relevant to fees), choice of law, and dispute resolution.

Received on Thursday, 23 August 2001 10:58:53 UTC