Subject: Re: Electronic Standards Delivery Issue
From: John Michael Williams (jwill@astragate.net)
Date: Wed Jun 11 2003 - 13:17:55 PDT
Hi William.
I absolutely agree with you, and I think
it is the DASC position, too.
One clarification:
Expressive works put in a fixed form automatically
are copyrighted to the author (or employer);
patents have to be applied for explicitly and
ALWAYS can be applied for only personally, by
the inventor(s). The inventor then may
assign ownership to an employer.
An employer can not
legally apply for a patent, and neither can
an organization such as IEEE. Patents
can't (under current law) be put in "public
domain"; there is no such thing for inventions.
If you invented it, you may apply for a patent.
Where a patent is involved, the owner can
refuse to enforce it, or can give it away or
sell it. But this has to be done contractually.
So, the best idea is NOT to use a patent in
standards work, thus avoiding all the legalities.
Any way, a WG, in working around a patent, may
easily come up with something better or more
useful than described by the patent. It's
a challenge--DASC has chosen to accept
this, rather than run away into the law office.
--
John
jwill@AstraGate.net
John Michael Williams
Hanna, William A wrote:
>
> Members of the DASC:
>
> Seems that we are getting into circular arguments. Here is my input:
>
> 1. Standards should not carry Patented work. It can reference patented work when it is absolutely necessary. Also, you need to be careful not to favor one vendor's product over the other. An EDA vendor should not surrender his patent rights to the IEEE because he is willing to support standards work. Members of the standards working groups should avoid bringing patented and/or patenable work to the standards process. We can reference it when it is absolutely necessary.
>
> 2. The software packages in the standard are copy right material. It is well understood that the fact that a volunteer did write the package, or a vendor donated it; the act of providing the source to the standards organization implies the surrender of the patent rights to IEEE. These sources should be very generic in nature and should not have anything specific in them that requires a particular vendor specific tool/utility to be able to use it.
>
> 3. It is not fair for the IEEE to try to own patent rights of the work of volunteers, or business entities supporting the development of IEEE standards, and for this reason, standards should include neither patented nor patentable software. Standards should be limited to avoid such conflicted situation.
>
> 4. Grandfather clock implies that all the old work should be treated as copy right protected only regardless of its contents. New standards shall not include any patetnable software. If it does then the owner of the patents rights has surrendered his rights by the very act of revealing it in a standard.
>
> I for one will not even open a standard document if there is any hint of patent rights of any kind. Let's be reasonable.
>
> Bill Hanna
> Tech Fellow
>
> Boeing-Phantom Works Phone: (314) 233-1678
> MC S102-1310 Fax: (314) 777-1171
> St. Louis, MO 63166-0516 E-Mail: william.a.hanna@boeing.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Zamfirescu [mailto:hxml@pacbell.net]
> ...
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