They
admit that. They also don't care. They have a large body of
moneyed members willing to implement their specifications. On the
other hand, the American courts have a tort for misappropriation that
while not used in other countries' courts, is available in the country
that
has the most companies that are members of the W3C and
have
to abide by American contract law and disputes arbitrated
in
American courts.
Remember, we are looking at the notions of standards, specifications,
etc.
and
inquiring what the value of these are (why does the XML spec
make
reference to ISO 8879 if it doesn't need to, why do people insist
on
the W3C being a standards organization when the results are
exactly the same with the current policies and processes).
IP is just one level
of
this. It is a good trail to follow because it outs several problems
with
authority (there is none and where there are assertions of such,
they
are all local (canadian, american, etc.) but the locale is important
because that is the venue). A bit more research may
uncover other
precedents old, new, or vague. When it gets to a court, a panel
of
judges has to call that one.
I
didn't say the situation wasn't twisted. It is. It may
also mean
that the references out of the statutes
in Texas, the sort of stuff
XML.GOV promotes, etc., aren't worth a
hill of beans in a contractual
dispute.
Hard to say. No
rules.
And those simple designs of five years ago are
getting awfully twisted
too. SGML looks good by comparison to
that. It needs some modernizing.
That is something ISO should consider
seriously.
Len
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
Ekam sat.h, Vipraah
bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
Both
Common-XML and Minimal-XML are subsets of XML, so I guess the same argument
can be made that SML-DEV misappropriated W3C's intellectual property.
Right or wrong, its a twisted trail.
It was my
understanding that W3C has trademarked the word "XML" and copyrighted every
specifications it produces. If my understanding is right, then W3C is
claiming ownership over some words and a growing set of specific word
sequences, not ideas nor concepts.
I care less
about intellectual properties and more about good simple designs. For
the past couple of weeks, I have been looking at SNMP in detail. I
don't know about you guys, but SNMP goes in the same basket as
SGML.
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