W3C Publishes "Current Patent Practices"

jdaly writes "Given the interest Slashdot readers have shown in W3C's Patent Policy, I would like to provide an update and pointer to the most recent document published by W3C on Patent Issues. The W3C has published Current Patent Practice as a W3C Note. Reviewed by the W3C Advisory Board, the Note represents the current state of W3C patent practice as implemented by the Team for W3C Recommendations. "

From the document: This current practice has evolved in order to satisfy the goal held by a number of W3C Members and significant parts of the larger Web community: that W3C Recommendations should be, as far as possible, implementable on a Royalty-Free basis [AC]. The current practice described here seeks to

• establish Royalty-Free implementation as a goal for Recommendations produced by new and re-chartered Working Groups;
• encourage maximum disclosure of patents that might prevent a W3C Recommendation from being implemented on a Royalty-Free basis;
• provide a process for addressing situations in which the goal of Royalty-Free implementation may not be attainable.

It serves as a guide for W3C Activities between now and when the policy developed by the Patent Policy Working Group is finalized. The policy is currently a Working Draft. Comments are welcome on the _publicly_ archived mailing list www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org.

Comments

Re:What's wrong with patents?

[KjetilK]

Ok, I'll bite (though I even had moderator access, I could mod you... :-))

There is a lot that is wrong with software patents, not with patents in general.

The problem is that everyone can make a small contribution, and when you write software, your standing on other developers toes, not their shoulders.

There are only a few things that are big enough to be patented. For example, the Web. But the web wouldn't have existed if it had been patented. TimBL has made this very clear, over and over. And TimBL has also made it very clear that you're wrong: It's the common standards that encourage growth, because it makes it possible for everybody to compete on a level playing field.

Software patents had been OK if they costed no more than $100 to get (so that everybody could get them), took a week to get granted, and expired after a month.

That's what it takes for software patents to hinder continued development. However, this is completely unrealistic, so better drop them.

OTOH, I'd like you to come up with good examples of software patents that encouraged growth. And we'll see how important they were compared to e.g. the Internet and the Web.

Proprietary "Standards" aren't Standards

[HiThere]

If a "standard" turns out to be encumbered with a patent, and the owner can't be convinced to allow it's use gratis as needed for standard conformance, then the standard should be revoked.

Sorry, but I don't see any way around this. A standard is a way of doing things that everybody is supposed to use to accomplish some purpose. A limitation on usage is an automatic effective limitation of the "standard". I.e., it becomes non-standard (some people are unable to use that approach). So the spec should be stricken from the list of standards.

If only some people are allowed to do something, then is just isn't a standard way of doing it. And to the extent that they even hedge on this the W3C should be ashamed of themselves. If they go against this, then the need to be replaced. It may be difficult, but they have violated the turst placed in them.

This isn't the first time that they (or one of their committees) have taken this stand. They can't be trusted. They need to be replaced.

This is not to deny that they have in the past done some good work, and that they may still do some good work. But we can't take their word as to what a standard usage is, because they have proven themselves unreliable.

This is what one should expect of them. Up until this year, or very late last year, every member was the representative of a large company, so it was to be expected that they would act for the benefit of those companies. The two Open Source members that they have added are going to be in the minority whenever a vote is taken. Company values will dominate this group. We can't expect otherwise given their structure and organization. But we can decide that they are not an acceptable authority for us to decide standard usage on.

This is made more complex because most of their past decisions were acutal standards, and much of the web and the net has been formalized based on those standards. But this doesn't act to mitigate their recent decisions. They can not be trusted. So some parallel group is needed that can act to specify acceptable standards. Even though most of what they would do originally would be to rubber stamp the pre-existing W3C standards (this one is unencumbered, that one is unencumbered, ...).

It has been said by members of the W3C that a fork would be extremely bad. Well they are the ones who have created the fork by chaning their definiton process. A fork in the standards is less bad than accepting pseudo-standards as if they were the real thing.
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Re:Cop-out time

[Zeinfeld]

Looks like (at first glance) that the W3C have taken a cop-out route... "yes we'll keep things royalty free (but only if we can't find a good reason to make them royalty charged)".

That is not the position at all. You are talking typical Slashweenie nonsense driven by some innane paranoia.

The policy says the exact opposite of your claim. The presumption will be in favor of royalty free.

Why can't they take a stance and say that without exception patents registered by the w3c will become public domain property (by filling the patent it prevents any other group trying the same thing without the public interest)

The policy is not about patents filled by W3C, it is about patents filled by others, some of whom may be members, others who may not.

There are very few W3C members who actually want RAND terms, in fact I can only think of one that has advocated collecting royalties and that is IBM. There are quite a few W3C members who work in areas that are heavily patent encumbered, in many cases due to the negligence of the USPTO there are multiple overlaping patent claims.

What most companies in those encumbered areas do is to file lots of defensive patent collateral for trading purposes. In most cases everyone holding the patents realise that ultimately the probability they are enforceable is quite slim but they can't disarm unless everyone else does. A quite reasonable objective of the W3C patent policy is to encourage negotiation of patent pacts so that a royalty free license is available to anyone who is willing to reciprocate.

Incidentaly, the reason I apply for patents on technology that we intend to make royalty free is to block attempts by others to do so. Whenever I publish a specification some snot comes out of the woodwork and runs off to the USPTO with a perjured patent application claiming it was their idea. Then they try to sell my idea back to me. I am getting so fed up with this that we are actually thinking of bringing a civil perjury suit against the next perpetrator.

The theory of patent law is to encourage use of new ideas. In fact the effect is now the reverse. I spend a lot of time looking at old mailing lists etc. for OLD ideas that might be tweaked to answer a current need.