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W3C Policy To Favor Royalty-Free Patents Only
A report on NewsForge notes that the Last Call Working Draft of the World Wide Web Consortium's patent policy has reversed the possibility found in earlier drafts of allowing patents in Web standards which required "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory" (RAND) licensing fees. This draft is the result of the vote by the W3C's patent policy board mentioned last month, which came after a proposed loosening of the royalty-free standards in the Fall of 2001.
I lurve w3c .... .. . . who cares again??
Free as in beer? or free as in syphilis?
Sorry to nit-pick
Who says you have to follow standards?
People [b]will[/b] create their own, royalty-free or not. The market decides who wins.
This is much more in line with the over-arching ideology of the W3C as an organization than the archaich RAND system.
Now when is WCAG2.0 final coming out?
lysergically yours
Huzzah!
That's right SOAP, you die and go to hell!
woo hoo!! Now I can patent the Wisp Rush and don't have to pay Blizzard a penny!!!! hehehe :)
Me
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I guess Amazon is probably going to lose some money...
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Someone has WarCraft on the brain...
Zug Zug!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
it just takes awhile sometimes.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
But getting rid of the Low and High Upkeep penalties better!!!
Go WC3!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
"Oh no! There go all the royalty checks on my patented tag!" - Marc Andreessen
I hope they now start to be more proactive in naming and shaming those who subvert their standards (no names m$entioned).
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
There are, AFAIK, currently dozens (hundreds?) of closed and open source implementations of virtually every defined W3C specification, all royalty free. Just as an example, I have used four or five XML/XSL parsers, some OSS, some not. Am I wrong about this?
Perhaps someone out there can inform me if RAND licences are required to implement any of the existing W3C specs?
If you were wondering what they're talking about, it might be:
in this submission
An article talks about it on
ZDnet
which I probably found on an old slashdot article.
The Working Group hopes to advance to Proposed Recommendation in February or March 2003, with a final policy to be adopted by May 2003.
I hope this puts flash out of bussines. It would be time for SVG to replace standard flash.
Let the proprietary follow free standards.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
How nice would that be? I've yet to see patents do a damn thing but stifle innovation. How the fuck can someone interpret a law written in the 1800's to apply to 21st Century society.
All laws should expire, if they are worthy they will be renewed (could you imagine the crisis if murder was legal for a day?).
Software can't be Free as long as there are patent restrictions on it, even if you can use the patents royalty-free. Why?
I'm not sure, exactly. I guess that there are some kind of restrictions that come with use of a patent, even if it's allowed for free.
Right now, if I have in my hand a GPL'd project, I can do whatever I want with it, can modify it in whatever way I want, as long as I do not add in a third kind of copyright. (e.g., I cannot add the stolen source to the next version of Windows into my GPL project and GPL it.)
As long as it's between me and the software in front of me, legitimately GPL'd, I can do anything to it, as long as I license the result under the GPL.
For some reason, I'm not sure why, this is not true if there are patents in it, even if the patents are categorically royalty-free.
Anyone want to explain RMS's position?
I'm afraid I can't find a link right now...
From the article: The draft policy now provides that all patents necessary to implement W3C specifications must be "royalty-free".
What does this imply for the now patented and non-royalty-free JPG and GIF? If I read this right (IANAL), I believe it says that only royalty-free patents can be a part of spec. In a nutshell, it appears JPG and GIF are SOL.
I think it would be great if W3C took a stand against abusive patents. This could be a really good thing, in disguise.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Gotta love those RANDy fees, baybee, yeah!!
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
I really doubt it will put swfs out of business. 90% of browsers used allready are flash compliant, there's 10% for SVG
n _flash_s vg.html
(source data on SVG users)
http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/compariso
Frankly I think swf simply has better tools to create them (In this case Flash). *shrug* I honestly haven't used much with SVG any links to a decent app so I can try it out/purchase one?
Well, I must say that this is a good thing. The web, (and those who program) don't need companies that make you pay for their format. (read: Unisys sucks.)
Actually, proprietary formats don't belong in the World Wide Web. They hurt it's development, and make it more difficult for developers to offer a wide range of support.
Any standards body needs to insist that standards it declares are standards that are not restricted by any patent limitations. If they do not, then they risk putting out a standard that one company controls, or worse, you need the permission of serveral companies.
If you want the benefits of having your technology as part of a sactioned standard, check your patents at the door.
There are, AFAIK, currently dozens (hundreds?) of closed and open source implementations of virtually every defined W3C specification, all royalty free.
This is not about implementations. This is about patents.
Perhaps someone out there can inform me if RAND licences are required to implement any of the existing W3C specs?
No. They are not.
The W3C policy has been for a long time that nothing with a patent encumbrance will be made a W3C standard. The story that you are replying to is on the subject that last month the W3C was considering changing this policy.
Under the proposed policy change, the W3C would gain the capability to adopt as standards things which in order to create an implementation of that standard you might have to pay some RAND licensing fees. (And it is quite possible that whoever paid those RAND fees and created an implementation might then turn around and make that implementation available royalty free.)
This policy change has been rejected, and things will continue as they were before, namely no patent encumbrances on anything that is going to become a standard unless implementing the patent is allowed universally royalty free. Meaning, no, it makes no difference, becuase nothing is different.
Had they allowed RAND licensing into standards, it would have had a number of pretty big differences in things. For example, it would concievably be impossible to implement such standards in GPLed software, as the GPL bans the use in GPLed software of patent implementations unless you can ensure that patent is perpetually and unconditionally licensed royalty-free to all future GPLed programs.
Does this answer your question?
Do you want fries with that?
This is linked to right from their main news page, too. Introduction indeed.
Don't you feel safer when you know that your Internet standards are in good hands?
Jouni
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
Tell the W3C you support royalty-free policies for standards!! Please email your support messages to:
www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
This latest status is good news, but the story isn't done. I suggest that many of you
add your support, so that this will happen.
It's an imperfect compromise, but much better than what MIGHT happen, and worth supporting.
I don't think the W3C would have ever consider, that strongly, adopting a standard which required royalties. I support that claim with common sense and a quote from:
W3C Patent Policy Working Group Chairman Danny Weitzner, "Despite the lack of a policy, there has always been an understanding amongst the various contributors that the Internet and the Web wouldn't be possible or scalable unless their contributions were available to everyone on a royalty-free basis."
So now there's a policy
While they're royalty free now, what is to say they're royalty free next week?
That's why you look for "irrevocable" in the patent licence.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What does this imply for the now patented and non-royalty-free JPG and GIF?
The current thinking on the patent status of still JPEG 1 is that Forgent doesn't have a case.
The patent on GIF's compression (U.S. Patent 4,558,302, owned by Unisys) is due to expire at the end of June. Patents that were once licensed royalty-free are quite hard to "evergreen".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Could someone give a quick explanation as to why I would want to spend $$ on a lawyer and have a royality free patent? What's the point? Don't say to prevent someone else from patenting the idea - I can release my invention into the public domain and document it as prior source.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Patents have a reasonably short life. The "GIF patent" (#4,558,302), expires on June 20, 2003.
No matter how bad things get, every now and then someone comes out and shows a little integrity/backbone. The next time I get wasted, I will specifically toast the W3C.
[o]_O
Although, in terms of browser compliance, IE is not much worse than the alternatives, commercial and open source, and significantly better in some cases. See, for example, the decidedly odd way that Netscape/Mozilla handle table widths, and compliance with CSS standards.
Virtually serving coffee