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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."
I thought Bezos already had this patent...
Its a good move to hold patents like this, if for no other reason than quick resolution to silly patents granted by the USPTO. But that's pretty much stating the obvious, eh?
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.
Good to know they gave us so much time to comment...
:)
Negative numbers or division by 0 and core dump?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
We don't need a new proposal for dealing with patents, we need to abandon patents altogether.
Europeans: the EU patents vote will be held on June 18th.
Don't wait for you opinion to be asked, it won't be.
Don't wait for the open debate, there isn't any.
Don't waif for someone else to do it. *Very* few people are doing anything.
The deal:
There are 626 MEPs that are going to vote on *your* rights, most of them will have never heard the bad effects of Software Patents. They have been asked to "unify", "harmonise" and "remove legal grey areas" from the European Patent Convention (EPC, article 52). Unless educated, they are going to say "yes" to patents. (M$ have patented their video format in the US, we are never allowed to write a player for their format. Promoting progress?)
Germany has 99 MEPs
GB, France, and Italy have 87 MEPs each.
Ireland has 15
(I can't remember the other countries of the top of my head)
Get informed, read the (lengthy) docs at ffii.org and contact your MEPs.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Me Cynical? not a chance.
feh
That way there was no chance of not getting the result they were paid to get.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
An industry "standard" can't BE a standard unless anyone in the industry can use it.
Of course, that is contrary to the trend, which is to closed "standards" even blessed by the Feds. For instance: IBOC digital AM/FM radio, adopted by the FCC, and something ALL stations will have to eventually install... It's owned by ONE company, iBiquity, and stations have to pay ROYALTIES to use it.
Corporatism != Free Market
is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.
With open source software do software patents really matter any more?
..., patent ..., or patent pending..., but who really cares.
Take any software patent for example. Sure, it's patented, but some enterprising young college student (anyone for this matter) makes their own implementation of the patent and releases it on the web as Open Source (and/or Free) software anonymously. That implementation turns out to be really rather decent and becomes widespread, perhaps more widespread than the "official" implementation. Improvements and additions are added (anonymously) and the unofficial becomes the unofficial-official.
Are the users of the unofficial implementation liable for patent infringement? I'd say no, but I'm not a lawyer. Is the creator liable? Probably, but who'll ever know?
More pragmatically, would the patent holder go after users of the unofficial implementation? I'd say a more emphatic NO. Maybe if they're a Fortune 500, but in that case who really cares since that realm might as well be on Mars.
Most pragmatically, would most users of that implementation care that it was technically illegal. I'd say a most emphatic no.
People using software are mostly individuals and small to medium sized businesses. Without going through a detailed prisoners-dilemma analysis I'd say the odds are you won't get in trouble using a technically illegal implementation and so you shouldn't worry overmuch that you're small corporation will get sued out of existance. In fact, the potential profits will outweigh such potential risk making it a practical no-brainer.
I see web sites all the time with source that says copyright
I'm going to get modded down by all the people who are of the mindset that copyright and patents are handed down by god for the benefit of the holder to the detriment of the user. But in reality the space for copyright and patent in the digital age is zero, nada, zip, nothing.
I view digital violation of copyrights and patents (especially of software) as the new "natural" order and civil disobedience at its most right. I think most other long-time 'net users do as well and are waiting impatiently for the rest of the world to catch up.
That means whatever policy the W3C comes up with is irrelevant before it goes into print and this whole discussion is moot.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
What part of the word monopoly do you not understand? A patent is a monopoly granted by the government. The whole purpose of an industry standard is that anybody can implement it. The point of a royalty-free patent standard is to insure that no monopoly power is exercised over W3C standards.
If you allow RAND or other non-royalty-free patent policies, then open source software will be shut out of the standard. You may call that freedom. I call your words doublespeak.
If you want to get a protocol appproved by the W3C, as a standard for use on the internet, your protocol may not use a pattented (or pattent pending) operation which would require that people using this standard pay you, or another company (the holder of the pattent) ongoing fees.
This includes, but is not limited to, RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discrimanatory) royalties. The reason that RAND pattents are included is that what is Reasonable or non-discriminatory to one company or developer may not be reasonable or non-discrimanatory to someone else. Just because I am not bothered by a $1500 one time fee, and $0.000025 per copy royalty rate, does not mean that Apue in India may consider either to be reasonable.
This does not prevent someone from requiring that the credits screen for any application using that person's pattented techcnology display at least as prominently as the other developers for the application, credit towards the pattent holder.
Then again, perhaps I should have read the article.
-Rusty
You never know...
All the news reports I saw mentioned royalty-free. This is the first I've heard about an exception.
See section 5 item 3. It's still there, in plain view. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html for why this is bad for ALL people.
So what you're saying is you plan to pre-emptively patent their policy to prevent patent proliferation? Preposterous!
Have you ever invented anything? I know I certainly haven't, however, if I did I would want to be able to make money off of it. A lot of people/companies would not attempt to innovate anything. Your amazing idea would stifle innovation. What might be more useful would be looking at frivilous litigation with respect to patents. Maybe awarding greater monetary compensation for frivilous lawsuits?
The proposed royalty free policy says that any royalty-free licence...
The Free Software Foundation says that such a limit infringes a clause of the 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.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
I did, made some money, and released it into the wild. It's a simple tool, with a new twist.( no need for details, it's a weird industrial niche tool) I invented it, designed it, took it to a machine shop, took all my spare loot, had as many as I could afford made, sold them easily, and that's it. I only made a few hundred bucks from it. I didn't get a patent, although I could have, but for several reasons I didn't. It's too expensive and hard right off the bat, it's insane complicated expensive nutso. I had no desire to make zillions of dollars from it, it was neat enough to see so many people go YES, and adopt it. It's in the wild now, and I know several other companies developed and built their own models, and I have no idea how many thousands are out there in daily use, but that's cool. I even one time saw someone who doesn't even know me using one of my tools on a tv news clip! that was a hoot! When I have the time and space and spare loot and opportunity, I have several more practical ideas kicking around in the old noodle here. I'll probably do the same thing as I did with the other one. I don't code, but I can build things, and design. And I like sharing, it's a nice concept. Yes, it would be sorta nice to make some more money from these efforts, I am perpetually sorta kinda dirt poor, but... I guess that isn't as important to me. Why, I don't know, but I've always been that way. Every time in the past I fixated on "making money" as my primary life goal I noticed it sort of got out of hand quickly, it was changing me to something I don't like to see in other people. So I don't do that anymore. That's as close as I can describe it.
heard an interesting discussion along these lines the other day. when someone is so fixated on food, we say they have an eating disorder, they are gluttonous, that this can be bad. when someone is so fixated on sex that they go nuts with it, go overboard, when it becomes their main goal, when they lose respect for others and themselves, then we say they become perverse, perhaps, it's considered as not a healthy thing, they've gone beyond what is healthy. When someone has a drink, that's ok, no biggee, when someone drinks every day, it can indicate something, when they are drunk every day, all day long, we say they are alcoholic, and this isn't a good thing.
Now, if someone makes some money, that's OK. when someone is fixated on it, when it overcomes all their other primary goals, we call it 'being a successful businessman", give them awards, call them "mr ceo".
Why in the other cases is excessive/compulsive uncontrollable behavior bad, but when it comes to accumulation of money and profits-at-any-cost it automagically becomes "good"? From where I stand, all those are illnesses, the latter called "greed" and "love of money".