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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."
Unfortunately, Bezos already has a patent on the use of a royalty-free patent policy. Though I'm sure he'd be willing to license it to W3C for a reasonable fee.
Some good developments in the great techno-legal world war. There had been too many bad ones lately...
This one would have been a small disaster if it had gone wrong. Now let's hope the EU makes the right decision too!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
It's really a shame that they have to allow patents at all. If they didn't they'd alienate most commercial contributors who'd then go to another standards body, or none at all. Since they do allow patents, though, it continues to promote the rediculous patenting of software processes.
Developers: We can use your help.
Damn that viral licensing ;)
It will make no difference. W3C does not issue patents, governments do. The issue here is that patented work with non-free licenses will not be accepted as W3C standards.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Somewhere, hopefully, a bunch of patent lawyers are groaning.
Your own damn fault, guys. You got greedy.
There's only so many people you can harass at the party before you won't get invited to the next ball. Have fun suing each other out of existance.
Might as well have said: "After much deliberation and comittee meetings, we have come to the decision that 15+1 equals 16. And therefore in all of our publications page 15 will be followed by page 16. We should all thank and congratulate those who contributed time, expertise, patience and a spirit of cooperation to this effort."
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
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
Trolling is a art,
Don't you think it's better if it develops more slowly but in the right direction (to bring people together in the greatest social revolution since the invention of writing) rather than really fast in the wrong direction (another method for people to make money)...?
I mean, what's the big hurry?
Daniel
Carpe Diem
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
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?
Yes it would. But that's not what the WC3 is doing, they aren't ending software patents. They are saying that nothing that requires paying royalties on a patent to implement can be part of the standard. You can patent your cool new *ML generator but you can't require everyone who uses *ML to pay a fee. This will allow more people to inovate not stifel inovation.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
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.
You're confusing sales with service, the misconception that the factory model of software development is the same as the service model. At least 85 to 90% of developers do not work for companies that sell software for profit (factory model). They work for companies that need software written for their own purposes or to service others (developers in a service model). Removing all software companies will not remove much money from the equation. Most developers are paid for their service, not for their output, i.e. they're paid to get software written, not to sell bits. People pay to get software which gets the job done either by buying bits from companies with patents, which is the exception, or by buying services, which is the rule. Patents only work for the few selling bits such as Microsoft. Patents don't help most of the industry working as a service.
Developers: We can use your help.
I think you missed the point. The real innovation isn't in standards, it is in implementation of them. For instance TCP/IP, HTML, HTTP are all free to use. IF royalties were required to use these not near the money would have been made off of them. The money is generated by the tools and bodies needed to build around the standards. More money is made by having these standards be free because more people will use the standards and more people will need tools and contractors.
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.
Anyone else find it interesting that this post was made a few minutes ago and almost instantly got exactly 4 moderation points for being interesting?
I'll tell you what's left when you remove royalties from the equation -- and it certainly isn't shills like you. It is innovation, freedom, and advancement for everyone. Why should I have to pay a guy a buck because he came up with the idea of a "shopping cart" on a website? Why can't I take the idea and move it forward? It is alright to patent machines and such, but patenting ideas is absurd. (And, on a lesser note, I wouldn't mind them patenting their code and only their code -- but what's the use of that?)
And ask yourself this: did the internet grow by leaps and bounds because Microsoft came out with IIS or because a bunch of organizations decided to pool their efforts to make one solid web server that can be configured to do anything a web server should do? I personally think proprietary software is holding us back and costing us far more than the cost of licensing the software because we can't take their ideas and build on them.
Then where do we get paid? Two ways: By implementing existing solutions in a way that people can use them, or by implementing entirely new solutions. For both instances, people are willing to pay money to have someone else do it. For both instances, it really doesn't matter whether the end result is Open Source or proprietary to them. We know that going the Open Source will allow us to satisfy more people with better products than the other case, because IT will constantly be evolving and building on the successes and failures of the past, rather than limiting the growth to one giant monopoly.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Couldn't the w3c recognize how much this would hurt them? I mean, look how irrelevant the Internet is now. If the IETF hadn't limited themselves to open standards like TCP/IP, etc., think how popular the Internet might be today! Everybody would be using it!
and LZW is free.
Patent #4,558,302 expires on June 20, 2003.
Joy!
This is a great FIRST step. Basically, standards by W3C will now ensure that no one has to pay a royalty when trying to conform to the standard. Compuserve's GIF patent greed fiasco should hopefully not be repeated in future standards.
... all you MBA and Law school folks grasp! You will kill innovation, you say! Well, if this means that Amazon.com will stop coming up with "innovations" like 1-click shopping and shopping carts, I think that is okay. These "innovations" were so ridiculously obvious that it insults any technical person's intelligence to classify them as innovations.
... any technology built on our technology is legally owned by us unless you licence an "innovator" contract ... for which we charge you 50% of all sales. The fact that the work of the W3C is given away for free, doesn't make it less valuable ... rather the opposite! As such, I feel that the W3C must setup a licence agreement to prevent technologies that are built on top of it to be royalty free.
However, I think we need to go further. Technologies built on top of W3C standards should not require royalties. Ack
Why do we need to do this?
Intellectual Property lawyers are greedy greedy greedy. They don't give a crap about the technical merits of a patent or innovation. They care about how many hours they can bill you and making partner in the firm. Anyone heard of patent portfolios? I think 10-30% of why biotech is not showing the results everyone expected is that these fucking patent issues have KILLED innovation. Go Canada for rejecting the Harvard mouse patent! Biotech is out of juice and these bastards have set their eyes on tech now. We must nip this asap!
Why is this justified?
W3C commands a significant position in the evolution of the World Wide Web. If it was a for-profit organization, it could easily say
Iq
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.
Take a look at what W3C is working on. Most of it is XML formats and other categorizing of data. A few things (e.g. PNG) may contain novel algorithms, although in the case of PNG the format was invented to avoid the patent restrictions of GIF.
It could be argued that W3C does its job best when it produces standards which are not novel, and are essentially what any person with the same mindset would produce on a good day. This is the exact opposite of the original, non-obvious nature required (though perhaps not enforced) by US patent law.
W3C is mostly about communication standards, and it's all about interoperability. Describing stuff in XML is more of a categorization skill than an invention. Good librarians are as important as good engineers-- and patents are about as useful as bicycles for ducks.
Finally, iteroperability only works if everyone can use it. XML and "semantic web" stuff is frequently going to be web services which are parsed by spiders and middleware servers (including web servers), where vendor or technology lock-in is anathema. Patents or threats of patents are at least as likely to slow adoption of standards as to speed it.
But one thing that has happened several times over the years, was that sometimes I couldn't easily/cheaply interface with or convert data from some other system. Customer gets my huge estimate, decides not to do it, and then I get nothing.
And if I have to "invent" something, I do it for the purpose of getting money from my customers when they buy my products. Not having exclusivity on the "invention" (I put that in quotes, because, hey, look at the stuff that gets patented these days) isn't going to stop me from doing what I have to do, to get my customers' money. What's the worse that can happen? A competitor clones my "innovation" after it has already been deployed and I've been paid for it? Ooh, competition and free markets, I'm scared! Hold me!
Not having to pay royalties means one less annoyance/complication to worry about, and fewer expenses to take away from the bottom line. This decision doesn't just help Free Software / Open Source guys. It helps everyone except monopolists.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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".