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W3C Revises Patent Royalty Policy

Posted by michael on from the doing-the-right-thing dept.

Jeff Heaton writes: "Looks like W3C is backing down on allowing companies to charge royalties for technologies that are incorporated into a W3C standard. In a controversial proposal made public last fall, the consortium debated whether to allow companies to charge royalty fees if their technologies are used in a standard." The new draft is online.

7 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Toll booth web? by jachim69 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Did you read the link, or god-forbid, even the summary above? W3C is backing down and refusing to allow royalty charges for standards.

  2. Not quite yet... by MrWinkey · · Score: 4, Informative

    They are not backing down just quite yet.

    The draft is not the final say on the matter. A "last call" draft will be published later this year, at which point the public and W3C members will submit comments. A final decision from the director of the W3C is hoped for by the end of the year, said W3C spokeswoman Janet Daly.

    So there is at least a year before it's totaly dead and gone and it may even come back if the members push it enough or somebody does. Thusly this is a victory but the battle isnt over yet.

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  3. more details, background by simonstl · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wrote a story at xmlhack on the new draft this morning. It's got some extra details and links to background information. The exception handling process looks like it'll be the area to watch.

  4. Not entirely... by Svartalf · · Score: 3, Informative

    They altered it so that the preferred mode is RF licensing on tech for W3C reccomendations- but left it open for the Working Groups to accept tech that is RAND or otherwise licensed and specified timelines for when they forfeit any right to inist upon the non-RF licensing. They dropped RAND from the discussion, but with the stated exception process, they all but said the term again. It's, of course, up to the working groups and there's defined timelines so there will be a much smaller likelyhood of a Rambus/JEDEC situation where they submarine a few patents on a real standard, so it's nowhere near as bad as things go. I don't really think they went far enough, to be honest, but it's much better than what they attempted to foist off on us previously.

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  5. Re:So for MPEG4.. by J.+Random+Software · · Score: 3, Informative

    The World-Wide Web Consortium doesn't have any particular influence over the Motion Picture Experts Group, and video compression is such a minefield of patents that a free standard is probably impossible (though I wish luck to the Ogg Tarkin team).

  6. Re:Huh??? by p7 · · Score: 2, Informative

    All they are saying is if someone is entitled to royalties for a technology that might be added to the standard, they will get a legally binding promise not to collect the royalties, before putting it into the standard.

  7. Free Software Representatives on the Policy Board by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative
    Three Free Software representatives are on the W3C Patent Policy Board:
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    Bruce Perens.