Slashdot Mirror
Revised W3C Patent Policy Out, Comments Invited
Janet Daly, W3C writes "Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) began what it expects to be the final review of the proposed Royalty-Free Patent Policy. A new draft has been published; the review period has been extended to allow for
public and W3C Member comments alike. Review closes 30 April 2003. The press release and summary give a short version of goals and changes of the policy."
That's about the stupidest thing I've seen today (not counting usual Slashdot trolling). This is a license that applies to standards developped by the W3C. It prevents the big companies that participate in W3C workgroups to claim ownership of standards that they developped/helped develop. It says nothing about anything that isn't a W3C standard.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
GIFs aren't patented. A compression algorithm used in GIFs is (the LZW algorithm). The GIMP (and perhaps other graphic manipulation software) allow you to create uncompressed GIFs, which are perfectly legal.
I don't think gif is a standard anyway, nor has it ever been one.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
One question is, how binding is this? If a member of the W3C patents a process then starts telling people to pay up (a few years down the line, maybe), is this really any protection?
Yes it is. If you are part of a standard's committee, and part of the committee's rules of participation state that you must disclose (and/or license at little or no cost) any intellectual property rights that are relevant to a standard you're involved in, then you can't submarine IP and expect to collect on it. It's been ruled illegal several times - the clearest case being Dell attempting to claim patent rights on the "VL-bus" VESA standard. See this for more details.
Rambus is in pretty much the same situation now - they're trying to claim patent rights on DDRAM, SDRAM, and pretty much every other kind of memory process... even though they were part of JEDEC at the time the standards were being decided on. And it's looking highly unlikely that they'll win at this point. Darn.
I think you have mis-read (or not-read) the press release. This is not about the W3C patenting anything. This is about members of the W3C waiving any patent rights they have to inventions which are incorporated into standards while they are members and participate in the creation of the standard.
However, the most important effect will be that members will have to "put up or shut up." From this standpoint this is a good step. A member who knows that a standard it is contributing to will incorporate subject matter (i.e., claims) from one of its patents or pending patent applications will have to "speak up or forever hold its peace."
If the member speaks up, it can exclude the subject patents or claims from the waiver policy. This, in turn, gives notice to the W3C that it should steer the standard in a different direction if it wishes to end up with a royalty-free standard. If the member does not speak up, it is implicitly waiving its patent rights an cannot sue for infringement in the future.