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W3C Revises Patent Royalty Policy
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.
Could this possibly be used by companies as an excuse NOT to incorporate their technology in W3C standards? Whatever their motivation not to do so might be.
a large number of issues raised by comments from W3C Members and the general public.
That is so much more polite than "We got caught and got our ass reamed.
The Gardener
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Did you read the link, or god-forbid, even the summary above? W3C is backing down and refusing to allow royalty charges for standards.
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.
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
But the sad thing is that this really is news. How often does public outcry actually get something changed? (Other than that who Star Wars/nSync fiasco)
And just when I though complaining about something wouldn't do any good...
[END HUMOR]
-Space for rent
I misread the first part of the story. They are changing their position away from willfully allowing royalties on standards. But they don't really have a method for enforcing the 'no royalties' stance either.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
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.
The consortium cannot tell a company whether it can charge fees for its technology. I think what they meant was that the Consortium will not accept a technology as a standard if there are fees involved. That's a bit different.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
damn i hope so.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
they don't really have a method for enforcing the 'no royalties' stance either.
Actually they have a very effective method if they choose to use it, they destandardise the technology.
It would appear that revisions of the W3C's patent policies is becoming a frequent task... As you can see here, W3C's patent practices were changed barely more that a month ago of January 24, 2002.
;-)
Additionally, you can see what the Slashdot community had to say about it then in this article posting!!!
Have fun...and I guess I'll see you all back here in about a month or so for the next revision...
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
"There is still an open question of what's going to happen in the case that we run into tech that's only available for a fee. That could happen regardless of what our policy is. We still have to sort out what happens in that exceptional case," he said. God only knows how many non-standard "features" that IE implements. This fact has failed to crash the net. I assume if browser makers wished to do the same with patented technology, they certainly could. It would probably be hard to keep giving the things away, though.
The W3C makes recommendations. If their recommendation is used by enough people it is a defacto standard, but it still isn't a W3C "Standard"
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.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I keep thinking it's time to buy up dark fiber and make a parallel and totally separate Internet. I only really visit about 10 sites regularly and they aren't commercial sites...so who cares about the rest of this crap. :P And all of those patents on things for the "internet" wouldn't be valid anyway...since we could just call it NotTheInternet. ;)
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Charging for standards, or even make them unknown to the public (if that were possible), would cause others to create new standards. I.e. Windows audio. If asf compressed down twice as much as mp3 at the same bit rate and such, everyone would want it. Question is, would everyone get it. There's no support for many OSs.
What would happen if WC3 started charging? People would develop their own technologies, or use wc3 "illegally". People being MS, Mozilla, Konqueror, Lynx, a small group of develoeprs...
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
There's nothing wrong with making money. But since the World-Wide Web is about universal access and platform independence, if your business model involves controlling who may use a technology and how, it has no business being recommended by W3C.
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).
The terms used are still vauge, and what the first condition means is NOT DEFINED:
A Royalty-Free license shall mean a non-assignable, non-sublicensable license to make, have made, use, have used, sell, have sold, offer to sell, import, and distribute and dispose of implementations of the Recommendation that:
1. shall be available to all implementers of the specification worldwide, whether or not they are W3C Members;
That and other conditions leave lots of room for abuse. Would a no cost add-in to Micro$haft's Visual $tudio count as available? Might they standardize MP3 because it is "available" to all? Availability is not always usable, especially if the tools of use are in some way encumbered. It does me little good if I can unencode something if I can't turn around and create content.
The Patent Policy Working Group believes that the RF license as proposed is compatible with all major Open Source licenses except the GPL. We are still working on GPL-related issues.
They have a lot of work to do and I'd like to see what "Open Source" support they have besides their belief system. The crux of their thinking is this:
A claim is necessarily infringed hereunder only when it is not possible to avoid infringing it because there is no non-infringing alternative for implementing the required portions of the Recommendation. Existence of a non-infringing alternative shall be judged based on the state-of-the-art at the time the specification becomes a Recommendation.
There is always an alternative! If there is not, the law and patent process is broken. Laws and standards should bend towards morals rather than morals and standards bend toward broken laws. W3C should not lend it's support to broken laws.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
We don't get everything we want, but we've done pretty well.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There is still an open question of what's going to happen in the case that we run into tech that's only available for a fee.
Might I humbly suggest that in that case they sit on their ass doing nothing. Or twiddle their thumbs. Or stick their thumbs up their butt. Prefferably all three at once.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Exception Handling:
Invited experts are not entitled to participate in the PAG [Patent Advisory Group]
If I read it right, when they want to use RAND they create a PAG to discuss the issue, and everyone who is anti-RAND is going to be excluded from participation!
Am I hallucinating, or is "Exception Handling" just a fancy name for Railroading-RAND-Around-Objections?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.