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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)
 And a recent decision regarding online radio. Although this is clearly a performance royalty issue, it is another good example of community norms colliding with the law. http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010802/22/online-radio We may see revisions in international courts. They could start from international standards and work toward a sensible policy. I would prefer to see ISO, the consortia et al work out roles that each could play. They can do that if the consortia does not as Goldfarb put it, consider them a rubber stamp and ISO understands that the consortia may not always be reliable partners. I agree with Mike Champion that the W3C is a terrible place to create standards and a wonderful place to incubate technology but that is beside the question of what do terms like standards mean to the community looking for guidance. All we can say today is patent anything and copyright the documents. Developers and their employers have to use their best judgement. No new news that. Also included on that page are the links to the decision by Dell to quit offering Linux on desktops based on lack of demand. It is still a market driven development world despite all efforts to resit that. Len http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Winchel 'Todd' Vincent III [mailto:winchel@m...] > Yes, you can embrace and extend. Yes, it is legal. Based on my research, I believe this is an open legal question. Generally, I do not believe the idea (under a GPL) has ever been tested in court and present intellectual property laws are not, in my opinion, sophisticated enough to answer the question. Some of these concepts, I believe, were tested in Sun v. Microsoft, but the license was very different than a GPL. Indeed, much of the answer to the question would depend on the license under which the intellectual property had been distributed and the type of intellectual property (software, documentation, etc.). So, there could be many different answers for many different licenses. I was once criticized for using the following example, because it comes from a Microsoft document . . . but . . . there is an informative taxonomy of different types of software licenses available at: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.html#_Toc427495718 Lawyers are generally paid to be able to argue any side of an issue. There are strong arguments on both (many) sides of this issue. Unless things have changed since I did much of my research just over a year ago, I do not think there is any definitive legal precedent in this area (in the U.S or elsewhere). At best, there are community norms. These norms would be informative in court, but not definitive. Napster, for instance, is a good example of community norms and intellectual property laws (and money) colliding. I will go one step further and say that in a perfect world, intellectual property law (internationally) would/should be revised and amended to take into consideration standards and the standards development process. Todd Winchel "Todd" Vincent III Attorney and Technical Consultant Project Director, E-CT-Filing Project Georgia State University College of Law 
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