[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XPointer and the '729 patent
At 12:48 PM 16/02/01 -0500, Eve L. Maler wrote: >On 6 December 2000, Sun Microsystems published on the XML Linking >comments list[1] a proposed set of terms and conditions This is excellent; thanks to Eve and Sun. >1 Request a reexamination of the '729 Patent at our own expense. This will require spending a lot of money with lawyers, after Sun probably already spent a bunch earlier in getting this silly thing. And if anyone wants to go after silly patents, it seems that '729 is hardly the worst. I believe that there is a more cost-effective solution. However, if there's a real desire to do this, I suspect that ample prior art could be discovered in the initial release of the EBT Dynatext docs or the "SoftQuad Explorer" docs. >2 Consider specific requests for changes to the terms. This is the right way to go. I have heard Sun people say that they want the terms to help enforce conformance to the W3C recommendations in the affected area, with the (worthy) goal of deterring "embrace and extend" tactics. (Note however that Eve doesn't list this among Sun's goals above). In any case, I think it's basically futile to try to use whatever leverage may exist in the '729 patent to do this. The main reason is that placing any restrictions at all on the granting of the license to the patent, without giving reasonably-paranoid legal departments excuses to paint implementations as risky, would be really hard to get right. So I suggest, once again, that Sun adopt a policy along the lines of: Without prejudice as to whether implementation of any W3C recommendations may infringe the '729 patent, Sun is willing to grant an unrestricted unconditional no-cost license for use of the '729 patent to any person or corporation. Should any person or corporation require documentation of this license, Sun will execute the appropriate document, provided at <url>, for an administration charge of <a couple hundred dollars to discourage silly paperwork>. Seems to me this makes the problem go away and doesn't let even the most obstructionist and paranoid legal department create FUD over '729. -Tim
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