[Sheflug] FSF's Position on Proposed W3 Consortium "Royalty-Free" Patent Policy

[Richard Ibbotson <richard [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

Those of you who remember Georg Greve from our seminar earlier this 
year will know that he would like you to know about this...


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 15:34:26 +0100
From: Georg C. F. Greve <greve [at] fsfeurope.org>
To: discussion [at] fsfeurope.org
Cc: announce [at] fsfeurope.org
Subject: FSF's Position on Proposed W3 Consortium "Royalty-Free"
 Patent Policy


Hi all,

in case you haven't read (and done) this already, please take a look
at the patent policy proposed by the W3C consortium and make sure you
protest that draft.

Otherwise we risk seeing an increasing amount of W3C standards that
cannot be implemented as Free Software.

Regards,

Georg Greve
FSF Europe, President


[ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html ]

 FSF's Position on Proposed W3 Consortium "Royalty-Free" Patent
 Policy

   25 November 2002

   The Free Software Foundation, represented by its General Counsel,
   Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University Law School,
 participated in the W3 Consortium Patent Policy Working Group from
 November 2001 through the current Last Call draft. The Foundation
 regards the current Last Call draft, which proposes the adoption of
 a "royalty-free" or "RF" patent policy, as a significant step in the
 direction of protecting the World Wide Web from patent-encumbered
 standards. But the proposed policy is not an adequate final outcome
 from the Foundation's point of view.

   The proposed policy permits W3C members participating in W3
 technical working groups to commit their patent claims
 "royalty-free" for use by implementers of the standard, but with
 "field of use" restrictions that would be incompatible with section
 7 of the GNU General Public License. Such "field of use"
 restrictions, in other words, would prevent implementation of W3C
 standards as Free Software.

   Section 7 of the GNU GPL is intended to prevent the distribution
 of software which appears to be Free (because it is released under a
 copyright license guaranteeing the freedoms to use, copy, modify,
 and redistribute) but which cannot, in fact, be modified and
 redistributed because of patent license restrictions that limit the
 use of patent claims practiced by the software to a particular
 purpose. Though other Free Software licenses may not happen to
 contain provisions equivalent to GPL's Section 7, this does not
 imply that programs released under those licenses will be Free
 Software if the patent claims contributed "royalty-free" to the
 standard those programs implement are limited to a particular field
 of use.

   As an example, W3 members may contribute patent claims to a
 standard describing the behavior of web servers providing particular
 functionality. A Free Software program implementing that standard
 would be available for others to copy from, in order to add
 functionality to browsers, or non-interactive web clients. But if,
 as the present proposed policy permits, the patent-holder has
 licensed the practicing of its patent claims "royalty-free" only "in
 order to implement the standard", reuse of the relevant code in
 these latter environments would still raise possible patent
 infringement problems.

   For this reason, the proposed policy does not actually protect the
   rights of the Free Software community to full participation in the
   implementation and extension of web standards. The goal of our
   participation in the policy making process at W3C has not been
   achieved. The Foundation urges all those who care about the right
 of Free Software developers to implement all future web standards to
 send comments to the W3C urging that the policy be amended to
 prohibit the imposition of "field of use" restrictions on patent
 claims contributed to W3C standards. The address to which such
 comments should be emailed is <www-patentpolicy-comment [at] w3.org>. The
 deadline for receipt of comments is Tuesday 31 December 2002.


Georg C. F. Greve                                
 <greve [at] fsfeurope.org> Free Software Foundation Europe	              
   (http://fsfeurope.org) GNU Business Network                       
 (http://mailman.gnubiz.org) Brave GNU World	                        
   (http://brave-gnu-world.org)




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