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

Not what we need.

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need a new proposal for dealing with patents, we need to abandon patents altogether.

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).

Re:Not what we need.

[ciaran_o_riordan]

It would be almost impossible to get rid of patents.

Most developed countries have signed the TRIPs agreement, article 33 of which states that patents must be availble for inventions and must last a minimum of 20 years.

Reduced term patents (3 or 5 years) will not happen due to this World Trade Organisation agreement.

More realisticly, we can try to prevent the adoption of software patents in europe, thus preventing them from being a completely global "commodiy".

We can also ask for reform of the patent review system. No country is going to revoke current patents but it could be possible to prevent such frivolous patents in the future.

Ciaran O'Riordan

Europeans, get your act together

[ciaran_o_riordan]

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

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.