W3C Poised To Release New Patent Policy

egoff writes "According to ComputerWorld, the Patent Policy Working Group at the W3C is ready to release a new proposal for dealing with technology patents that get in the way of creating web standards. While making no comment, the W3C was seeking public input for its Royalty Free Patent Policy until April 30th."

Comments

Rationale for new patent policy

[Anonymous Coward]

The radical growth of the Internet has been achieved largely because of the freedom of its developers to use the tools they felt necessary to implement the services that have become standards. While it is true that Free Software to a large part has been helpful to the process, I feel that forcing developers to avoid technologies that are patent-encumbered will promote the Free Software agenda at the expense of freedom: freedom to create the very technologies that allowed Free Software to thrive in the first place!

Isn't this an example of putting the cart before the horse? Free Software is great and all, but true freedom comes from not handing control of everything to one faction... something I would think would be obvious to other supporters of open source software. A monopoly over the Internet is just as bad in the hands of OSS developers as it would be in the hands of Microsoft.

comment period

[Alien54]

it was once of those secret comment periods that was made known only to insiders, and to people with lots of money.

Me Cynical? not a chance.

feh

That way there was no chance of not getting the result they were paid to get.

Re:Not what we need.

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

Mod parent insightful.
Patents have been shown time and time again as a source of significant litigational abuse and also as a barrier to entry for many innovations. They have been stolen from small investors, and big corporations feel free to abuse patents they don't own, and then counter-sue in court and bury the little guys in paper. Not telling others how your process works is the only way to keep things safe for a little while, patents don't help the little guys, they only help the capital rich bohemoths...

If you can't compete with clones, it's because you have a bad business model, or bad business practices. When's the last time you heard of Denny's(a cheap restaurant) suing Carrows(Another of the same) over selling an item that was too similar, or over making the order process too similar? You haven't, because they can compete with the same products and processes just fine. (Both companies are doing well, AFAIK).

Patents and punitive litigation are both seemingly good ideas that have been more than abused, at least where I live(USA).

What happened to royalty free?

[smiff]

Apparently, there's a loophole in the royalty-free standard. Can someone tell me when this happened? From the Computer World article:

But the group also included an exception provision that will make it possible for members to consider alternate licensing terms when it's deemed impossible to meet the royalty-free goal, he said.

...

Don Deutsch, vice president of standards strategy at Oracle Corp., said the provision was a last-minute compromise designed to address the concerns of IBM and Microsoft. Deutsch added that he expects it to be approved.

All the news reports I saw mentioned royalty-free. This is the first I've heard about an exception.

not a GNU problem, though, because...

[feepcreature]

To summarise:

The proposed royalty free policy says that any royalty-free licence...

may be limited to implementations of the Recommendation, and to what is required by the Recommendation;

[W3C]

The Free Software Foundation says that such a limit infringes a clause of the GPL:

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement... conditions are imposed on you... that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.

If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all.

For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

[GPL]

The example seems OK. A limited licence that allows you to use patented algorithms to implement a standard does not prohibit anyone from writing or distributing code that implements the standard. So far so good.

But the limit would prohibit someone who received the code from modifying it to go beyond just implementing the standard. And the GPL does grant that right to anyone who receives the code. And it prevents you from denying the right to anyone who might receive the code.

But I'm not sure the GPL makes you responsible for guaranteeing that right to every third party -- it just prevents you from removing it yourself. So maybe you can distribute the code after all, since it is not you who may (or may not) restrict recipients from carrying out their rights under the GPL.

You are no more responsible for patent owners' potential litigation against recipients than you are for any other independent factor that might prevent a recipient from modifying the source - like a lack of money, time, tools, or clues. Patent owners' litigation against recipients is no more pertinent to a distributor than any other independent factor.

After all, there are lots of other laws that restrict the reuse and modification of GPL'd code (in spite of clauses of the GPL). You aren't allowed to use it for illegal purposes, for a start. And if that restriction (on the recipient) doesn't prevent you from distributing the code, then nor can patent restrictions (on the recipient) prevent distribution.

Moreover, code GPL'd in a software-patent-free jurisdiction could already be distributed to one where patents might prevent use or modification of the code -- and it's hardly the intent of the GPL to prevent distribution of code in Scandinavia, just because US laws may be a bit of a mess. Otherwise the GPL could be stymied by the existence of a single perverse jurisdiction anywhere in the world.

Of course you should probably talk to a lawyer if any of this matters to you. What do I know?

And in some jurisdictions this might degenerate into wrangling about the intent of those who used the GPL (and/or the intent of the GPL, which may not be the same thing). There are lots of ways this could go. That's why the GPL's absolute purity seems a bit too fundamentalist for me, though I see its advantages too.