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W3C Approved Patent Policy: Royalty Free Standards
Danny Weitzner writes "The World Wide Web Consortium has approved the W3C
Patent Policy based on review by the W3C Advisory Committee and thanks to lots of input and cajoling from the Open Source community and slashdoters. Read the public Director's decision. We're the first major standards organization that sets the explicit goal of producing only standards that can be implemented without paying patent royalties. Our policy requires legal commitments from all who contribute to the development of Web standards that patents held by the contributor will be available on royalty-free terms. Both proprietary and open source software have been critical to the growth of the Web. With this policy, we intend to enabled continued innovation by both open source and proprietary development."
does this mean .NET will never be a web standard?
thank you W3C!!!
while its somewhat offtopic that's an interesting article,
though I must say the day I'm forced to use a GUI for writing web pages is the day I quit.
The Anti-Blog
I could have sworn that, for some time, the W3C used to specificaly state that it did not produce standards, only reccomendations. That, apparently has changed, and I'm wondering just when that happened.
Along these lines, just how does a vendor consortium such as the W3C become a standards body? Is it simply a matter of judging public acceptance and then declaring oneself to be a standards body? (I think that's basically what OASIS did.)
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
IMO, the driving force behind innovation in the technology sector has been money, or the promise that you can make money for inventing something and then selling it. Yes open source developers have made tremendous innovations that proprietary has not, but most of these developers have either been paid by a company (ex: a Linux distro), or were doing this development while working for another company (hobby developer). If people start to remove money from the equation, what's left? I cannot beleive the entire technology sector will continute to invent and grow as fast as it has without the promise of profit.
.sig error: carrier signal lost.
This is only one small battle won on the front of silly patents. there's still nothing stopping the USPTO from handing out patents like candy. In fact, this could encourage people to file patents, submit to the w3c committees, and lobby in the future to have that "outmoded patent provision" removed. It's a constant struggle, and while this is a good first step, it's certainly not the last
this issue finally made me cough up the bucks and im damn glad i did
should have done it long ago
and i challenge anyone else who hasn't done so, to join now. its not a whole lot of money and they really need the support.
very good news to hear it went our way this time
Or are alot of the Big wins latly going to the little man and screwing the big guy. Look at the last several legal victorys as of late. Rolayty free standards, grokster, etc. Is it possible that we are starting to finaly see the legal system work and not just be bought?
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
Nice article.
Summary: Because IE doesn't support the ancient HTML standard OBJECT tag, the author considers it to be "new technology". Now excuse me, but if IE sucks, isn't that IE's problem?
Switching from IMG to OBJECT is logical. Not only that, but HTML 4.0-compliant browsers will deal with it just fine, making it nice and backwards-compatible. Your browser doesn't support HTML 4.0? I would encourage an upgrade. It's 2003 for chrissakes.
So,
What happens when a standard is produced in good faith by one or more parties, the W3 picks it up and ultimately generates a standard. Then everybody else picks it up and builds it into their browser, OS, application, tooth brush, and household pets.
Then, a year later, SomeEvil Co (A leader in Evil Patents since 1899.) decides that there is infringement and sues everybody involved?
The problem is two fold.. one is that there needs to be a process to search for applicable patents.. but the problem here is that too many patents are too broad. Secondly, if the search doesn't turn up any problems, whats to stop somebody from deciding that HTTP chunking infringes on their patent on, say, chunky peanut butter?
Is there a process to find *potentially applicable patents* and going to those holders to ask for explicit approval of the use? Or would that just be begging for lawsuits anyway?
This policy will never hold, as it allows patent extortionists who are not members to snipe at the W3 with licensing demands. The process for "resolving" disputes is hopelessly optimistic: the group is apparently arrogant enough to believe that the sheer power of the ideals expressed in their policy will discourage profit-seeking behavior, and that the organization will be able to muddle through without any dependencies on externally-invented IP except for that produced by good, like-minded souls who choose to give up their profits for the good of humanity.
The W3 will now have even less clout than it did during its heyday.
42
I agree that technological advances have been based largely on financially driven concepts. However, much of this was built on free underlying technologies: TCP/IP, HTML, HTTP, etc. Without these, it is doubtful that the technology we see today would even exist. It is the ways and means of strengthening and restructuring of the backbone that will either encourage or prohibit future growth.
One would never guess from this article that this action was a few months ago considered to be a bad thing by most slashbots. Alan Cox even wrote of this plan that "He could smell the rot from here"0 91&cid= 4672042p e.html
The problem with a "royalty free" patent, is that it can be sold to someone who then charges you for it.
This what happened with the jpg pattent. check the previous stories on this subject for more info.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=45
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/savingeuro
I agree that it would be best to fix the patent system, but the W3C doesnt' have the power to do this, but they do have the power to set up a standards system that allows defensive stratagies. I think it is a good step by the W3C.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
The IETF has been increasingly willing to standardise patented technologies. Examples involve Cisco's HSRP/VRRP patent and IPsec NAT traversal (with a semi-free waiver). I'm sure there are many more.
It is wonderful that the w3c is willing to keep data formats and the higher protocol levels unencumbered (this is a real victory to all the people who made their opinions known), but the infrastructure is even more important.
Most likely it would mean that a given format would not be recommended in the next standard. A couple of things on that point though...
1) Specific image types aren't really recommended one way or another: Graphics on the Web
2) The <img> tag is possibly going away in XHTML 2.0 and would be replaced by <object>. This makes the point even more moot, as <object> is pretty damn broad.
3) The real question is of browser support. I think we can all agree that Mozilla won't drop GIF support for quite awhile and IE probably never will. Hell, IE doesn't even support PNG properly.
Patent law explicitly alows you to file your application up to a year after the 1st publication of the. In other words a "Patent Parasite" can file applications on every W3C RFC after reading the RFC.
If the RFC is the 1st publication of the idea then the "Patent Parasite" wins.
At least this way W3C members can criple patent parasite.
Another step is to use those patented W3C standards to countersue people who attack OSS developers. It's just realy dificult to design a policy for this.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The biggest problem I see with the W3C's patent policy is that it encourages corporations to license their patents on a royalty free basis until the standard has gained such widespread adoption that developers have no alternative but to comply. Then, said corporations will be able to charge exorbitant licensing fees for such patents. Sure, the W3C could then exclude them from the next standard, but given that so many developers have to focus on backward compatibility with the already established user base, excluding a patent-encumbered part of the standard from the next release would do little to alleviate the problem.
What the W3C is really doing is paving the way for another Rambus like fiasco.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
There's a loophole several light-years wide in this W3C policy.
The patent holder can still charge you a one-time $100 million dollar _license fee_ if they want, yet still be compliant with the wording of the W3C policy of "no royalties".