http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Oct/1350.html
Thanks for your thorough statement to the patent policy of the W3C. ---- My comments: Did you notice that some of your (valid) complaints to the RAND patent license also applies to RF patent licenses, to my understanding? Namely, the restriction to certain implementations and prevention of incremental improvements of the standard (or derivates). > Even if the W3C chooses not to > support RAND licenses we would personally love to see the W3C > require that any Members grant royalty free licenses before working > in a Working Group. What I would like to see is that any patent, which is holded by a Working Group member and which is touched by a Recommondation of that WG, has to be relelase to the public domain, i.e. making it non-existant. Even RF patent licenses might impose restrictions on uses of the standard, and I think that no standard should be restricted in that way. (With one exception maybe: I could imagine that legal force (like patents) is used to enforce standards compatibility of implementations, but I am not sure, if that is a good thing.)
