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."

Comments

Simple solution

[David_Bloom]

If a certain way to do something is the market leader (e.g. GIF on web pages), all the patents applicable to that particular way to do something (such as LZW compression, but only if you are compressing a GIF) should be nullified. That way, patent owners (e.g. Unisys) will not be rewarded by making "trojan patents": patents that the owner really doesn't enforce until they have become part of a standard (such as lossless image compression).