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On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, Champion, Mike wrote: > Don Park [mailto:donpark@d...] > > > I am not touching XForms or anything with W3C written on it > > until I get some assurance from W3C that their stuff > > are either patent-free or uses > > free-patents. > > > This brings up another point: what's the state of the patent issue with > respect to XFORMS http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=1035 ? I'd agree > that XFORMS will have limited appeal if there is a patent claim hanging over > it. > > The W3C can never give the assurance that a member company won't try to > claim a patent on a W3C-Recommended spec. Even if Don became Lord High > Dictator of the W3C tomorrow, they couldn't give that assurance <grin>. We > can argue all we want about what the W3C patent policy should be, but the > W3C doesn't make or interpret or enforce the patent laws. Yes, actually, they can. Contract law. You can write nearly anything as a contract. In a non-legal nutshell: "We, MegaCorp X, as a condition of membership in w3C, agree that we will make W3C aware in a timely fashion of any existing or pending patent we hold that a proposed w3C specification may infringe apon. Failure to provide said notice automatically invokes a free and irrevokable licensing of the relevant patent for use with the specification. Failure on our part to recognize the impingment does not invalidate this clause. _Willful_ failure to make known an impinging patent shall cause the specific patent to be placed in the public domain and terminate all IP rights by MegaCorp X to the patented item. We recognize that it is MegaCorp X's responsibility to identify any patents that MegaCorp X holds that may apply." Draconian, sure. But it does the right thing by shifting the burden from everyone else in the world to find out that concept Y has been patented to the holder of the patent to _make known_ that they hold a patent on Y. -- Benjamin Franz "Code as if whoever maintains your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live." -- Nancy Lebovitz, the button lady
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