W3C Looking for More Patent Feedback 128
KjetilK writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has posted a response to public comments it received. Part of the response is that the review period is extended to 11 October 2001. Continue to submit elaborate comments to the proposed policy, and make sure that the points made by the W3C are specifically addressed. Also, read the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ."
The letter I sent -- feel free to reuse (Score:3, Insightful)
develop platform-agnostic applications for the web, I am extremely alarmed to
see the W3C's proposed stance on patents & standards. With the proposed
changes in place the web will become more and more a showcase for large
corporations and will extinguish the independence and innovation that have
made the internet freely accessibly to anyone with a web browser (of any
flavour) and a dial-up account.
Indeed, with the proposals in place the web risks becoming a tool of a few
corporations (I think I don't need to list them specifically) and innovation
will largely be shut down. After a while, the W3C itself will cease to be
relevant, and I can hardly believe that is what is intended.
I urge you, therefore, to reject these proposals and show your organisation to
be one of integrity to the ideals of Tim Berners-Lee et al; be proud that you
are not just another tool of big business.
International Versons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The letter I sent -- feel free to reuse (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether you are right or wrong, you won't convince anyone with a letter like that.
Re:Patents create prosperity (Score:2, Insightful)
Standards that aren't free don't work, period.
This isn't at all a question about America vs. the world. If this proposal passes, a patent held by an off shore entity could just as well be made into a standard by the the W3C as a patend held by an American company.
too vague (Score:3, Insightful)
A RAND License:
* must be available to all implementers worldwide.
* must extend to all Essential Claims.
* may be limited to implementations of the recommendation, and to what is required by the recommendation.
* may be conditioned on a grant of a reciprocal license on RAND terms to all Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee and its affiliates.
* may be conditioned on payment of reasonable, non-discriminatory royalties or fees; and,
* may not impose any further conditions or restrictions on the use of any technology, IPRs, or other restrictions on behavior of the licensee; but,
* may include reasonable, customary terms relating to operation or maintenance of the license relationship such as the following: audit (when relevant to fees), choice of law, and dispute resolution.
what's a reasonable amount for someone living in Nepal versus someone living in the USA?
don't do this royalty thing, it's opening a whole can of worms like enforcement and audits that beg for corporate sponsorship and involvement. Why invite a bunch of lawyers to ruin an otherwise great party? This in my mind will destroy what w3c's version of a "standard" really means.
Re:Patents create prosperity (Score:4, Insightful)
These aren't patents held by the W3C, but by member corporations. The W3C depends on consensus and its reputation as an authority to, as you put it, `defend their hold on web technology'. The W3C is a standards body, not a corporation!
You speak as if the W3C is there to make money itself -- it's not. It's there to set forth a set of agreed standards. One of the core properties of a good standard is that with enough skill, anybody can implement it freely. Including patents in standards breaks this freedom. The only way that patent should be allowed in a standard is if the patent is given up by its owner -- there is not other way that freedom of implementation can be maintained.
You also seem to think that the W3C is an american body. It's not, after all TBL is English for a start! No, it's an international body comprising of people from all over the world. The primary bodies involved are MIT (American), CERN (European), and KEIO (Japanese). Nor is the World Wide Web owned by the Americans -- it's global.
Your belief in the need for patents to encourage progress in our industry is flawed. Europe doesn't have software patents yet Ireland is the world's largest exporter of software. Our research efforts are just as fruitful as that of the US. Our industry is as fruitful.
Bill Gates (correct me if I'm wrong) said that software patents were needed because progress proceeded so quickly in the industry. However, that is the very reason why software patents should be rejected.
RAND and SSSCA (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing that concerns me about RAND is related to the issue of SSSCA. Undoubtably, if SSSCA is passed, those that are in control of patents regarding digital right authenication methods are going to push heavily for inclusion of their property into the specs. That means every piece of hardware and software will have an added 'tax' akin to the RAMBUS memory tax, and will drastically increase the price of hardware and software.
Similarly , if RAND passes, not only would the cost of software go up because of payments, but it would be very hard for open-source programmers to get their foot in the door. Sure, this won't affect the core functionality of the web (HTML and XML), but who knows what the next future technology will be that will make a big difference on the web? I strongly urge everyone that cares about open development to reply to this.
I find it interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this DOES show the power of public outcry - had
Just remember, don't just bitch on
With non-free standards, they cease to be relevant (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the IETF precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
-dB
Re:Flood them with *intelligent* comments! (Score:2, Insightful)
In particular, an intellligent comment would suggest an alternative approach to patent-protected technologies that would still address the concerns that motivated the proposal in the first place.
Say there is a web technology that is in the process of becoming a de facto standard, but which is also protected by patents. How can W3C address such a technology to make it as accessible as possible? Remember, if technology makes W3C irrelevant, W3C won't do any good at all as a standards body and won't be able to make anything open.
I think the best we might hope for is some sort of mandatory limited free license for RAND patents used in not-for-profit or research development.
W3 is going to the crapper (Score:3, Insightful)
This is yet another example. Patents are good. They help inefficient startups with a new idea survive long enough to be competitive. Before patents, companies kept everything secret to protect themselves and science was stifled. Patents allow companies to protect their IP but for this protection they must open their invention to inspection. I would love to see all the proprietary, closed algorithms be patented and open sourced. That way they could still protect their work, but people could learn from their code. Innovation would be much faster. But patents should NEVER be applied to open standards. The patent should be in the implementation of a standard not the standard itself. Patenting an algorithm is OK, patenting the data structure it's processing shouldn't be.
W3 has forgotten its roots and its goals. They should be ashamed for even suggesting this.
assert (RAND == 0); (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the main problem of the Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) policy is that as soon as the fee is not 0, it effectively discriminates again Open-Source Software. So the only Really Authentically Non-Discriminatory policy is to ask for patents to be licensed for free if they are to be used by W3C recommendations.
Another problem is: what happens to the Open-Source implementations that W3C used to provide as proofs that its recommendations worked? Are we supposed to trust closed source software now?
I am afraid we are just reaping the logical consequences of Microsoft, Adobe and al. joining W3C and playing nice for a while: now they are trying to buy it.
Re:What about the IETF precedent (Score:2, Insightful)
I would say that the W3C is in a difficult position. They fear that they will be sidelined if they don't find some way to incorporate patented technologies into their standards. However, this sort of action has the effect of draining the credibility out of a standards body, because it divides the community which wishes to use the technology for which the body is responsible. I believe that the W3C should avoid ratifying anything which has patents attached, unless the patent-holder allows the technology to be used on a royalty-free basis.
To make God laugh, tell him your plans.
Re:Patents create prosperity (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's examine some of the assertions in the post.
The company with the most capitalization has the most patents, so the patents must be the cause? Isn't it just as likely that heavily capitalized companies apply for lots of patents.
Without patents, people have no reason to form companies. That's just silly. People with no intention to patent anything form companies in order to make money. Patents are a tool not and end.
Without patents companies have no incentive to do research. Doesn't that ignore the fact that most new products do not involve patented technology.
Patents do provide an incentive to innovate, but they are not the only incentive.
The final paragraph ought to make it clear what th e posters actual position is. He's being sarcastic. Did you miss the point.
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
What you see as an enjoyable, free experience, others see as a wasted business opportunity that they could exploit if they could get the open source, and other little guys out of the way. Perhaps some of the participants have even more enmity towards open source than just competition.
Re:The last patent (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, I want to understand this. You apparently write software, so you understand what software and algorithms are.
Do you feel that software patents are patents on uses of machines? In other words, given a particular software patent, do you feel that it is possible to violate the patent merely by using a machine you already own..such as by typing in a certain string of bits? Do you feel that if I own a piece of property, I should be able to use it? For example, if I own a computer, should I be able to type any string of characters I want into the machine? If it happens to be hooked up to a network, I may end up writing a computer program and possibly compiling/distributing it? And if not, why shouldn't I be allowed to use my own property. Why should I have a piece of property that is perfectly capable of doing something but not be allowed to use it to do that because someone bought the right from the government to stop me from doing something with it? And I don't mean like driving my car into a crowd of people, this is the government telling me I must stop using my property because someone else bought the exclusive right to use the property for some purpose. Should I get compensation under the 5th amendment takings clause for the loss of use of my property?
Thought question: Let's assume that lamps are new and that the idea of turning on a lamp is novel and nonobvious. Would you allow someone to get a patent for turning on a lamp that already exists? This is the simplest case of a software patent. You take a machine with circuitry that already exists and by flipping some of the user-configurable switches in the machine, you make the machine do something interesting (processing electricity to make a light shine). In other words, you could get a patent on the process carried out by the lamp, and that would prevent the lampmaker or anyone else from letting people know that they can turn on the lamp. Is this a good idea? Why should someone be able to get a patent that covers a process that can be carried out in a machine that already exists, and which can be started just by flipping some switches in that machine? I don't see how this can be justified.
If software patents protect the "process" itself, without being linked to use on any machine, then isn't this just a pure idea which shouldn't be patentable anyway? When designing a algorithm (solving a math problem), you go through the same steps in figuring out what to do regardless of whether or not you write the solution down on paper, or you type it into a computer. Why should a solution to a math problem be protected somehow just because the person who solved it said that it could be used to solve a word problem (technical problem/engineering problem) and that the solution can be encoded into a machine that will do the arithmetic when real numbers are put in for variables in the algorithm. After all, that is all that computers do, they take solutions to math problems for which they have been given inputs, and they carry out the arithmetic of those solutions based on those inputs. Why should this be protected because a person says that a machine carries out the arithmetic instead of a person using a pencil and paper?
I just don't understand what sort of perspective would make it seem ok to have software patents because the only two ways I can look at software, either as pure thought, or as a use of a machine don't seem like legitimate reasons to patent something. I can understand a patent on a real machine, but taking a machine that exists and flipping some switches on it is not making a new machine in my book.
Do you have a different perspective on this? I am not swayed by arguments like "small companies need patents to survive" as part of this argument. That kind of a statement is appropriate for discussing the economic issues behind software patents without worrying about whether or not the underlying patent is pure thought or not. If you wanted to say that "regardless of whether or not these things are pure thought or not, there are economic issues..." then that's fine for that kind of an argument. However, economic arguments like that have no bearing on whether or not you are patenting pure thought or not.
At any rate, I am sorry if I am being annoying and longwinded here, it's just that based on my math background, it is obvious to me that software patents are patents on pure thought (pure mathematics) regardless of whether or not someone says that they do the math "on a machine" or "on a network" or "with pictures" or "to solve this real world engineering problem" (which I call word problems...you wrap a math problem in words to represent a real-world situation).
yet another letter (Score:2, Insightful)
they are W3C Members;
and
5) may be conditioned on payment of reasonable, non-discriminatory
royalties or fees;
are contradictory claims. Hell, (5) is a contradiction in and of itself since anything that is conditioned on payment discriminates against those who can't afford it. Combined with (1), however, this leads to questions.
Does "available to all implementers worldwide" include students?
Does "available to all implementers worldwide" include countries like Mexico who are already telling patent-holders where they can stick it? Or Cuba, where it is illegal in US law to do business? There is no way an implementer in Cuba could legally create an implementation of a standard based off of a patent held by a US patent holder -- not paying the patent holder would be illegal, and paying the patent holder would be illegal. Fuckin' great. Scratch "worldwide".
If you're going to include this RAND crap, then it needs to have exemptions for students, universitites, the worldwide poor, governments and government agencies, and those who write software for the public good. But then, who's left?
Why was this RAND stuff even included? Under what possible circumstance is the RF license deemed "not good enough"? The RF license already allows patented technologies to be included in a standard, and is already both "reasonable" AND "non-discriminatory". The ONLY difference between these licenses is the RAND cluse 5, and clause 5 is neither "reasonable" nor "non-discriminatory". Clause 5 is _inconsistent_ with RAND clause 1, and is therefore _unreasonable_. Clause 5 forbids some countries from creating implementations, and is therefore _discriminatory_. Scratch clause 5, scratch RAND, scratch all this contradictory garbage.
-Brian
RF: It's not done until it's done. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is better to have NO standard than a flawed, encumbered standard. The internet community can wait. And if members of that community are feeling impatient, then they can lobby the obstructing patent holders directly.
Anything else than this firm stance will ensure a slide down a slippery slope, ending up where any but the most trivial standard will be patent encumbered and ususable in free software.
(This was also mailed to www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org).