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Revised W3C Patent Policy Out, Comments Invited

Posted by timothy on from the fine-toothed-comb dept.

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."

4 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. FSF's position by arvindn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here are FSF's views on the (previous version of the) royalty-free patent policy.

  2. my thoughts by cultobill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a Good Thing. The W3C should patent most of it's standards so that assholes can't. It raises the issue, though, of trusting the W3C members to not be those assholes that this protects against. An explicit policy on how they deal with patents can assure us that the patents won't be abused.

    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?

    --
    -- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
  3. License revocation on lawsuit . . . by SquareOfS · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Most comments will probably be about what the FSF got exercised over, namely the restriction of the royalty free license to standard implementations. The summary page mentioned in the article, however, also has an interesting point:
    • The license may be suspended if the licensee sues the licensor.
    (Disclaimer: IANAL, nor have I yet waded through the legalese of the proposal itself -- just the summary)

    Does that mean that the following can happen:

    1. Entity A implements a W3C standard, in the process receiving a royalty-free license for some implicated technology from Entity B.
    2. A distributes its implementation.
    3. time passes . . .
    4. A sues B on an unrelated matter, say for example, getting B to abide by the terms of an open-source license.
    5. B suspends A's royalty-free license on the technology in the standard implementation.
    6. All distributions of A's implementation now in license limbo courtesy of a suit on an unrelated matter?
    How on earth can this be a good idea?
  4. Re:Explain these things to me by knobmaker · · Score: 3, Interesting
    GIFs aren't patented. A compression algorithm used in GIFs is (the LZW algorithm).

    I appreciate the clarification, but this is exactly what I'm wondering about. How do you patent an algorithm and then attach it to a process that could be performed by another algorithm just as capably? I understand the logistics problems here-- if your browser attempts to open an image compressed by an unknown algorithm, it can't. And I think I understand why the royalty-free patent standard is being proposed-- as a defensive measure against stuff being admitted to the standard and then used to extort fees from programmers who use the stuff.

    I just don't understand the logical basis for software patents.