On Thu, 07 May 2009 17:48:06 +0200, Per Fröjdh <[email protected]>
wrote:
...
Today Ericsson joined the W3C Web Applications Working Group. Some W3C
members may be aware of the Ericsson preference to license some of its
patents on FRAND terms and conditions. For the avoidance of doubt we
would therefore like to state that we understand that the W3C Patent
Policy applies to this Working Group and the licensing obligations of
Working Group participants apply to Ericsson.
Nice to know :)
There is a possibility that Ericsson in the W3C WebApps Working Group
might be faced with a situation where we would have to exclude an
Essential Claim with respect to a first public Working Draft or
documents later in the W3C Recommendation track, e.g. due to a
Submission by other member causing one of our claims to become Essential
claim. Unfortunately an exclusion at that stage will initiate the
Exception Handling in the W3C Patent Policy and may cause significant
additional work by the Working Group to design around the Excluded
Claims. Ericsson would like to find a way to avoid causing all the work
associated with the Exception Handling according to the W3C Patent
Policy.
Thank you. (Having been involved in two such groups, I would like to avoid
it too :) ).
In case Ericsson representatives in W3C, long before the publication of
the first public Working Draft, would be aware of a patent or patent
application that they think might have or get claims that might become
Essential Claims to a future first public Working Draft, Ericsson would
like to draw the attention of the Working Group to such a patent in case
we want to exclude such claims from the W3C RF licensing requirements,
and instead license them on e.g. FRAND terms and conditions. The major
purpose of this would be to enable the Working Group to avoid language
in the first public Working Draft whereby claims of the patent might
become Essential claims. In this way all the additional work associated
with an exclusion after the publication of the first public Working
Draft could hopefully be avoided.
Yes. As mentioned below, the ideal situation would be not to run into the
problem at all, but given the Ericsson policy this appraoch is at least
more helpful than excluding on the last day of a call...
As a new member in the WebApps Working Group it has not yet been
possible at this moment to identify which claims that might possibly be
Essential Claims for specifications presently being developed by WebApps
Working Group. We will look into this now. Hopefully there will be no
Ericsson owned Essential claims. What Ericsson can do now at this moment
regarding the WebApps Working group is to draw the attention to patents
or patent applications. At the moment Ericsson representatives are only
aware of three different patents and patent applications and
corresponding patents and patent applications in other countries which
we would like to inform the WebApps Working Group on. The first is US
6,321,250, the second is EP1310114 and the third is PCT/EP2008/064352
(not yet published).
Can you provide a little more information about what these patents are for
(i.e. a rough idea of what area they might cover)?
We understand that this document is not a formal exclusion in accordance
with the W3C Patent Policy and we understand that the WebApps Working
group can decide to ignore it. We can only hope that our efforts to
avoid late exclusions are welcome. Hopefully we will not need to make an
Exclusions at all.
right :)
Cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group
je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
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