-----Original Message----- From: Carl W. Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 9:07 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes
Michael, > >"Tim Berners-Lee has sent a letter of concern to the president of > >ISO about the idea of collecting royalties on...guess what... ISO > >language and country codes! According to the letter, the ISO > >Commercial Policies Steering Group is proposing a royalty on > >commercial use of ISO language, country and currency codes. The > >whole idea seems absurd. On what grounds could uttering lang="en-US" > >be subject to any intellectual property right that justified any > >royalty demand?" > > Good question. It would seem to me that if W3C purchases the ISO standard that under the terms of the license they can use them in any manner that they see fit. ISO can not extend the terms of the license after the fact to include royalties on clients. If they extend the terms of the license then we should stop using the new ISO standard and use the old codes to set up a W3C standard. I don't think that the courts will uphold that ISO has the rights to go after every web page developer for royalties and that the W3C has the right to expect that either ISO maintains is current policies or that the W3C has the right to develop a compatible standard using the old codes. It would be like the Unicode Consortium deciding to start charging for using the standard. Carl *************************************************************************** Carl & Michael, First, I didn't know that a public domain standard could be purchased by a private organization. Also, the developers of the standard had to specify and intellectual property (IP) that they owned that was relevant to the and either give up rights to it for use in the standard or make available fair and equitable license of that IP to anyone requesting it for purpose of using that ISO standard. I don't know that that process gives ISO a right to sell or sublicense those IP rights. The only intellectual property right created by the ISO standard that I know of is copyright (c) of the complete standard itself, which is owned by ISO and gives them the right to sell and distribute the standard to raise revenue. ISO has licensed certain national agencies like ANSI and companies like Global Engineering Documents to sell them on ISO's behalf, with a fee paid to ISO. Can someone please explain to me what the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group is, and what it is empowered to do? Clive 21 Sep 2003 ************************************ Clive P Hohberger, PhD Corporate VP, Technology Development & Director of Patent Affairs Office: +1 847 793 2740 Cellular: +1 847 910 8794 FAX: +1 847 793 5573 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************
