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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.
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.
We don't get everything we want, but we've done pretty well.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.