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

FSF's position

[arvindn]

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

Re:Why?

[Pxtl]

Okay, I'll bite. The idea is that you can do whatever you want with your owns stuff patented - however, if you want your patented material to be incorporated into the W3C standard, then its up to you to comply with their requirements. All standards boards have various requirements before something can be considered as "standard". It is for the good of the economy.

my thoughts

[cultobill]

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?

Explain these things to me

[knobmaker]

I guess I'm just stuck in the last century, because I don't really understand the whole thing. I didn't have the patience to read the draft, but I read the press release, and I'm scratching my head over the whole idea of software patents. It's been a long time since I did any coding (anyone working with the 6502 any more?) but I seem to remember that there were always an infinite number of ways to accomplish any programming task. How do you patent one way, and then claim that no one's allowed to use another way to do the same thing? Or am I completely confused here? (I admit that this is almost a certainty.)

As a writer, I can't help but make comparisons with copyright law, another form of abstract intellectual property protection. If you're a writer, you can't copyright ideas. If I want to write a book about a great white whale, I can. I can even call it Moby Dick, and not just because Melville's copyright has expired. Titles cannot be copyrighted. So how come, for example, the .gif standard can be patented?

Of course, I may have completely misunderstood all of this. In which case, never mind.

Re:Explain these things to me

[critter_hunter]

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.

License revocation on lawsuit . . .

[SquareOfS]

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?

Responsibility to the community

[NtroP]

You can't copyright a concept - there are too many ways for people to come up with it independently. However, you can copyright a specific formula or algorithm as a means to an end. Companies who have invested time and money in perfecting these formulas should have the right to benefit from this.

BUT, IMHO, as soon as you try to make it a "standard" - thus forcing the world to use it, you should be required to make it royalty free and fully documented. There is a certain responsibility to the larger community for any organization or company that finds itself in this possition.

Information is too important to risk limiting its exchange. Case-in-point: M$ word documents. The "defacto standard" for document exchange is Microsoft's Office formats. However, the formats aren't fully documented and are at risk of changing with every new version of office. We would love to be able to ditch Office for an open-source (open format) solution, but we deal with other companies and government agencies who expect documents in Office format and send documents in Office format to us. It's a catch 22. We can't move to an open standard format without having a (redundant) system to be able to communicate with "the other 95%".

M$ has every right to sell their products. They have worked hard on them. However, because the formats have become the "standard", (and Microsoft has been doing everything it can to make it that way), M$ should be forced to open the format and fully document it, so that others don't have to reverse engineer it every time, to inter-operate. An open standard does not preclude MS from selling office. If it is the best product, it will sell. But an open standard for document exchange will allow true competition, and hence greater product improvement, by allowing software companies to compete on the technical merits of their products instead of on a closed format.

The same concept goes for audio and video. If you're going to call it a "standard" you shouldn't be able to charge for it. Charge for your product, not for the method of data exchange.

My $.02