Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
"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.
It could be an excuse indeed for some companies to avoid using W3C as a standard defining organisation and try to go to different forums that offer seemingly better financial incentives.
The question now for the W3C (and any other SDO for that matters) is: what do they want their standards/recommendations to be?
Do they target wide adoption and compliance? Do they care about the development of the medium? Do they want to allow the possibility of occasionaly creating de facto monopolies and cash cows for people who manage to tie their intellectual property rights to some standard? Do they have enough confidence in the strengh and credibility of their organization to take a strong stance regarding IPR issues?
It's not an easy decision for the W3C, it is even harder for SDOs like the ISO, the ITU or others that rely on their members contribution (for standard development and financial contributions).
As a side note, the whole issue of patents on software is far from settled in many jurisdictions. W3C standards have an international appeal and there is a huge liability issue regarding the non enforceability of such patents on a worldwide basic. This issue can't be looked at with an american law background only.
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
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).
We don't get everything we want, but we've done pretty well.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.