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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.
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.
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.
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
"Oh no! There go all the royalty checks on my patented tag!" - Marc Andreessen
this isn't about patents, this is about the W3C.org which is an internet standards group. there was this possibilty that they would charge folks to impliment what was considered the standard...oh hell read the story.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
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.
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?
I guess this was mostly a joke, but in case it was not - you might be interested in knowing that:
Amazon Tastes Its Own Patent-Pending Medicine and One-Click Shopping: litigation turns out unexpected real owner:
Amazon (internet bookstore) received a US patent on reducing the need for data input in case of repeated ordering through a network like the WWW. Based on this patent, Amazon sought an injunction against a competing bookstore. Amazon had applied for the same patent at the EPO under EP0902381 in Sep. 1998 under the name "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network". By the time a search report was issued by the EPO, this patent had already aroused an uproar in the USA, leading to the discovery of a lot of prior art. Under the impression of these facts, Amazon refrained from further pursuing the patent application at the EPO. Meanwhile it has turned out that the One-Click technique is "owned" by a subsidiary of Thomson Multimedia, which had obtained a similar patent a few years earlier.
Whoever is going to try to force it - will be in trouble. Seems like there is previous art more than carry. Even I have made such a wonderful thing in 1997. Who has not :) :)
Hey folks, there are 100 other standards organizations where we have yet to win this fight.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Rather it is that W3C working group members could have gained the right to charge implementors for patents held by the members that they deliberately embedded in the standard. This is called "patent farming".
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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
Patents have a reasonably short life. The "GIF patent" (#4,558,302), expires on June 20, 2003.