[Patents] W3C: Public review of Patent Policy Framework Last Call

[scott_k_peterson@hp.com (PETERSON,SCOTT K (HP-USA,ex1))]

For better or for worse, RAND licensing is not new with the W3C. It is the
focus of the patent policies of a number of standards organizations (for
example, ISO, ECMA, ETSI, ITU).

I recommend that those reviewing the draft W3C policy also take some time to
consider another feature of the draft policy: Working Groups may be
chartered to develop W3C Recommendations that can be implemented on a
royalty-free basis (at least to the extent that patents are known during the
process of developing the Recommendation)(see, primarily, draft policy
section 5). This feature of the policy should foster the consideration of
essential patents, if any are identified during development of the
Recommendation (including consideration of alternatives that would not
require the identified patents). This may sound unremarkable; however, it
offers a benefit over straight RAND policies, which tend to encourage those
developing a standard to ignore patents, and let users of the standard
negotiate for licenses after the standard has been adopted.

On this issue of essential patents, the policy is not rigid: the draft
policy recognizes that while it may be important for some standards to be
implementable on a royalty-free basis, there may be other cases where
standardization on a patented technology is consistent with the role that
the standard is expected to play.
___________________________________________________________
Scott K. Peterson               |  Hewlett-Packard Company
Corporate Counsel               |  1 Main St., 10th floor
scott_k_peterson@hp.com         |  Cambridge, MA 02142

-----Original Message-----
From: Holger Blasum [mailto:blasum@muc.de]
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2001 4:04 PM
To: patents@liberte.aful.org
Subject: [Patents] W3C: Public review of Patent Policy Framework Last
Call


Hello All,

when browsing to the W3C page today (looking for the XLST spec), I ran into:

Public review of Patent Policy Framework Last Call draft (open for 
public comments till 30 Sep) on top of the main page news.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/

For a layman, it seems to be quite balanced, but I am wondering what 
"reasonable, non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing terms"
eventually mean for open-source software. 

On the positive side, this may teach lot about handling interoperability
issues.

As with other WGs, since Aug 10, W3C has an archived public mailing list 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Aug/thread.
html
(so far it has only attracted spam). 
Subscription: <www-patentpolicy-comment-request@w3.org> 

(This would also be a good topic for an industry summit such as Bruce
Perens once called for http://www.perens.com/Articles/Patents.html, or ;
has that already taken place?)

-- 
Holger Blasum <holger@blasum.net>
GnuPG 1024D/1CCA6604639C07F5146A

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