Re: [www-svg] <none>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Robert DiBlasi wrote:
> 
> In Status of this document there is a paragraph'
> discussing patents:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/
> 
> <snip>
> There are patent disclosures and license commitments
> associated with the SVG 1.0 specification. These may be
> found on the SVG 1.0 Patent Statements in conformance
> with W3C policy.
> </snip>
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2001/07/SVG10-IPR-statements.html
> 
> Can anyone comment of how or if the patent disclosures and
> license commitments may affect developers of products or web pages based
> on this specification and any of the patent mentioned in this
> SVG specification?

I'd also like someone to comment :) Any lawyers out there?

<im-not-a-lawyer mode="on" opinion="personal">

The question is: are the named patents essential to implementing
SVG or to generating SVG content? Are there ways to implement SVG
without infringing the patents?

Obviously we can't do anything with the patents that have not
been named... except possibly think of RAMBUS.

</im-not-a-lawyer>

> This patent disclosure and license commitments paragraph
> has never been in any of the SVG specifications ....until now
> 
> Please comment .....

It's a recent requirement of the W3C process that all specifications
have a clear IPR situation in terms of licensing. I think the
SMIL2 specification was the first.

This way, implementors can decide if they are infriging IP and have
some idea of the licensing terms.

Dean

Received on Monday, 23 July 2001 21:29:55 UTC