Re: Proposal for issue 327

The PAG section (http://www.w3.org/TR/patent-practice#sec-PAG) of the
Current Practice Policy identifies the conditions under which a PAG is set
up.

............................................
David C. Fallside, IBM
Ext Ph: 530.477.7169
Int  Ph: 544.9665
fallside@us.ibm.com



Monday, October 07, 2002 12:46 PM
To: David Fallside/Santa Teresa/IBM@IBMUS
cc: xml-dist-app@w3.org
From: rayw@netscape.com (Ray Whitmer)
Subject: Re: Proposal for issue 327



David Fallside wrote:

>Issue 327 expresses a number of concerns regarding IP [1]. I propose to
>close this issue by noting that (a) the concerns will be covered as part
of
>W3C's normal process of evaluating IP during the Recommendation track, and
>(b) discussion of IP matters is generally intended to take place outside
>WGs -- hence the PAG mechanism for handling a WG's serious IP issues --
and
>so the LC issue list is not the place to lodge the issue.
>
>
It is not clear to me that "discussion of IP matters is generally
intended to take place outside WGs."  It is the job of the WG to produce
a spec that conforms to the charter, and the IP requirements are
requirements that should be taken into account.  It is clear that it
must take place outside of the WG if the WG has not been able to resolve
the problem.  But I think the WG should be the first line of defense.  I
could be understanding something wrong here, though.

I think that the WG must try to receive more information from those who
think they have IP that is applicable and try to resolve the problem.
 The last call issue was raised by me, and I was not the first to
question the statements that had been made by some participants which
seemed problematic if a RF (zero cost) specification was the goal.  It
seems to me that the working group should come to one of the following
conclusions:

1.  The WG feels that there is no problem and vote to decree that there
is no real problem here, so the specification will go forwards and W3C
may choose to form a PAG if they disagree.

2.  There is a potential problem, and they will work on it with the
members who made the statements that seem to be a problem to determine
the nature of the claims that may need to be paid for to implement SOAP.

3.  There is a potential problem, and the WG is not able to deal with
it, so they will call for a PAG to try to resolve the problem.  In
another case, the result of the PAG and W3C actions has been to throw it
back to the WG to ferret out the problems and solve them.

The LC was where I thought people were supposed to try to get a
resolution on this sort of concern.  Then, I may not understand the
current practices correctly.

Ray Whitmer
rayw@netscape.com

Received on Monday, 7 October 2002 17:47:14 UTC