[Patents] [Georges.Nissen@inria.fr: W3C a des atouts pour le probleme de brevet P3P ( Intermind )]

[Bernard Lang Bernard.Lang@inria.fr]

Computergram
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:07:15 +0200

+ World Wide Web Consortium Fights Off Privacy Patent

After a lengthy legal analysis, the World Wide Web Consortium 
(W3C) has concluded that its Platform for Privacy Preferences 
(P3P) does not infringe a patent held by Intermind Corp. P3P 
was designed to let web sites tell users what their privacy 
practices are, and to give those users more control over their 
personal information. Just as P3P was about to be widely 
deployed, Intermind announced its intention to charge royalties 
to anyone using the specification. Web developers dropped the 
spec like a hot potato. The W3C decided to act. "Given the 
fundamental importance of privacy protection on the web, and 
our commitment to open standards, we decided that it was our 
responsibility to provide the community with a thorough 
analysis of the relationship between the patent and P3P," 
explained the W3C's Daniel Weitzner. 

The W3C retained patent attorney Barry Rein to evaluate whether 
P3P infringes Intermind's patent. Rein has concluded that 
developers can comply with P3P without violating Intermind's 
intellectual property rights. His reasoning is that Intermind's 
patent describes "communications objects" used as "control 
structures" to direct client-server interactions. The control 
structures use object-oriented programming to transfer 
executable code and metadata from client to server. Rein and 
his team say that since neither the P3P proposal nor the User 
Preference file includes data, metadata or instructions 
encapsulated in programming objects, P3P-compliant web services 
and user agents will not literally infringe any claim of the 
patent. 

The W3C says the support of the web community was critical to 
the patent analysis. During the review, the W3C called on 
developers to contribute information that might help its patent 
attorneys. It received 100 substantial technology 
contributions, which apparently helped enormously. All that 
remains is for those same developers to take up P3P and 
implement it in ways that do not violate Intermind's patent. If 
they do, the W3C can give up patent law and get back to 
encouraging the development of other open standards though 
collaboration. "We felt that we owed it to the web community to 
clear up the confusion," Weitzner concludes, "but hope not to 
make this a regular practice." W3C's job is half over, and 
policy analyst Joseph Reagle reckons it should issue a 'last 
call' for queries and suggestions from the advisory committee, 
shortly. After that, it will try to promote the specification 
and try to make sure that companies bundling the technology do 
so in a way that keeps the standard open. 


-- 
Bernard.Lang@inria.fr             ,_  /\o    \o/    Tel  +33 1 3963 5644
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~lang/  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  Fax  +33 1 3963 5469
            INRIA / B.P. 105 / 78153 Le Chesnay CEDEX / France
         Je n'exprime que mon opinion - I express only my opinion
                 CAGED BEHIND WINDOWS or FREE WITH LINUX