The deadline is TONIGHT, NEW YEAR's EVE, for public comments on the World Wide Web Consortium's final draft patent policy. Please read the message forwarded below and tell the W3C to take the "field of use" provision out of their patent policy draft. And spread the word, today.
The W3C has produced a patent policy that allows for patent restrictions to be imposed on how the languages of the Internet may be used. A "field of use" clause enables protocols to be enacted which may employ patents to block freedoms naturally exercised by developers of information and communications technology.
The rest of the new policy shows great responsiveness to the great public opposition that was expressed in October of last year when they began considering allowing the establishment of protocols on which private interests may hold patents, and stands as a profound testimony to the essential role that so many see that the W3C must play in supporting sound and just information infrastructure and policy.
However, the "field of use" clause endangers the whole policy, enabling unreasonable restrictions to be imposed on the usage of standardized communications protocols. Please read the following and send a comment to the W3C Patent Policy Comments list stating that the future of the Internet depends on their taking a clear position against patent restrictions, and on their recognizing the integral role that Internet communications protocols play in the freedom on which innovation in information technology depends.
Seth
-------- Original Message -------- Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 14:11:17 -0500 (EST) From: Jay Sulzberger jays@panix.com
Tuesday 31 December 2002 Deadline for Comments on W3C Patents Policy
In the past two years the Free Software Movement has moved W3C, the Official Standards Body of the World Wide Web, from a proposed patent policy, which would have, in future, denied us our present right to full and free use of free software to build the Web, to a policy intended to guarantee that free software may be used without fear of patent encumbrances. This move is an important victory for us. But the present proposed policy on patents has a bug that is worth fixing. The mechanism of the bug is non-obvious, except to people who have studied the GPL and certain other free software licenses. It is a bug that, if the proposal is made an official standard, would allow for patent encumbrances to be laid on certain free software in circumstances where today no encumbrance is allowed.
Here is what the Free Software Foundation says on its front page about this bug:
<blockquote from="http://www.fsf.org" what="first of the GNUs Flashes">
The W3C "Royalty-Free" patent policy proposal does not protect the rights of the Free Software community to full participation in the implementation and extension of web standards. Please read more on this issue and send a comment to the W3C.
</blockquote>
Part of the effort that moved the W3C to its present position was a furious outpouring of comments in opposition to the original proposal of the Englobulators:
http://www.w3.org/2001/ppwg http://www.w3.org/2001/10/patent-response http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Oct/thread....
The fix needed right now is a small fix. But the W3C must again be reminded with what jealous vigor we guard our right to build our Web the way we have built it down to this day, using free software.
The bug appears in Item 3 of Section 3, titled "W3C Royalty-Free (RF) Licensing Requirements", of the present proposal:
This Item allows for a supposedly free grant to use a patent to be so restricted that a piece of Web infrastructure software might be encumbered if used for some non-Web use. Since the GPL does not allow such encumbrancing, GPL-ed Web software re-purposed for non-Web use could not be legally freely redistributed.
Please read the Free Software Foundation's page on this bug:
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html
The text of the page is below.
Here is the official Last Call for Comments:
http://www.w3.org/2002/12/patent-policy-lastcall-info.html
If you write a comment in your own words, for repair of the bug, it will help.
<personal>
I shall write in, and I shall argue against adoption of the buggy item.
I shall also suggest an extension of the deadline for comments.
</personal>
Jay Sulzberger secretary@lxny.org Corresponding Secretary LXNY LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization. http://www.lxny.org
<blockquote from="http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html">
FSF's Position on Proposed W3 Consortium "Royalty-Free" Patent Policy
25 November 2002 (updated 4 December 2002)
[image of a Philosophical Gnu] [ English ]
Our Position
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@w3.org. The deadline for receipt of comments is Tuesday 31 December 2002.
Further Non-Legal Explanation of Position
Many in the community have requested some additional explanation of FSF's objections to the policy. We have added them below.
FSF's objections center around Section 3 of the W3C's proposed patent policy. Item 3 of that section says that the royalty-free license may "may be limited to implementations of the Recommendation, and to what is required by the Recommendation". That is a "field of use" restriction.
The problem is the interaction of such a "field of use" restriction with Section 7 of GPL. Under Section 7, the "field of use" restriction is a "conditions are imposed on you [the distributor of GPL'ed software] that contradict the conditions of this License". The "conditions of this license" require, for example, that those receiving distributions of GPL'ed software have the right to run the program for any purpose (Section 0), the right to modify it for any purpose (Section 2), etc. Any of these "purposes" could easily practice the teachings of the patent beyond what the "field of use" restriction allows.
Here's a detailed step-by-step example that shows how this problem could play out:
1. Programmer P downloads the Konqueror web browser, receiving it under terms of GPL.
2. P learns of a new web standard that requires exercising a technique for parsing URLs that is patented by Corporation C. C has licensed the patent under an RF, non-exclusive license, but with a "field of use" restriction that says the license can be used to "implement the standard". The standard, as it turns out, covers only what browsers must do with URLs, and says nothing about the server side or clients that aren't user browsers.
3. P implements this technique in Konqueror, and seeks to redistribute the modified version on his website so that other users can benefit from Konqueror now complying with the standard. If he does, he is bound by the GPL under copyright law, because he is redistributing a modified version.
4. However, he knows full well of a condition on that code that contradicts the GPL (violating Section 7) -- namely, he knows that C's patent license prohibits folks from taking his URL parsing code and putting it into, say, a search engine. Therefore, under GPL Section 7, he is prohibited from redistribution.
5. You might think that he can simply assign his copyright to the existing copyright holder of Konqueror let distribution happen from that source. They could distribute under GPL, but they would be granting a self-contradicting license. Nothing (to my knowledge, but IANAL) prohibits someone from distributing copyrighted works under licenses that make no sense and are self-contradictory. However, it is certainly true that those who receive distribution of the works are stuck and can't undertake further distribution or modification themselves.
Thus, regardless of who makes the changes, the result either shuts down distribution or forces the original developer to abandon GPL. Both outcomes are very unfortunate. This is why we encourage you to write to comment on the Last Call Draft.
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Updated: $Date: 2002/12/04 14:50:44 $ $Author: bkuhn $ _________________________________________________________________
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