Questions and answers about W3C's Current Patent Practice
This page is a public guide to W3C patent policy. Today, W3C's patent policy is described in the Current Patent Practice (CPP) W3C Note. Material available on this page, including frequently asked questions about the policy should help participants in W3C Working Groups to understand how our patent policy works.
This FAQ provides answers to questions about the Current Patent Practice (CPP) W3C Note. While the FAQ is not designed to serve as a substitute for the Note itself, these questions should help clarify the manner in which W3C handles patent issues on a day-to-day basis.
A. This establishes a requirement that the Working Group produce a specification that can be implemented without paying royalties, based on the information available at the time the specification is declared a Recommendation.
A. Only those Working Groups whose charters explicitly declare that the Working Group is governed by the CPP will be run under these patent procedures. The CPP is meant to cover all new Working Groups chartered after 24 January 2002. In addition, Working Groups re-chartered after that date will generally be covered by the CPP, unless the Working Group's specification is already at or past the Candidate Recommendation maturity level.
A. We plan to transition all current Working Groups to the CPP as their charters expire. With one exception, any WG whose charter expires from now on will not have the simple extension of time that has normally been done. Instead, the group will be re-chartered to include reference to the CPP. This will require an Advisory Committee Review of the revised charter. Where necessary, charters may be extended in time for up to three months to allow this AC Review to take place. The only exception to this rechartering requirement is that groups which have already issued a Candidate Recommendation specification are eligible for simple extensions, without addition of the CPP to their charters.
A. Working Groups whose charters do not make specific reference to the CPP are operated according to the IPR Procedures in the W3C Process Document and by any IPR rules specified in the Working Group charter. WGs operating under these older rules run the risk of the various uncertainties that served as impetus to create a new Patent Policy and the Current Patent Practice document. Therefore, we hope that all WGs will shortly transition to the CPP, and later a final Patent Policy.
A. No. The CPP is only applicable to groups that produce Recommendations so the CPP will not be added to charters of groups that have no Recommendations in their charter.
A. As has always been the case with W3C Working Groups, participants who join an RF Working Group must have a call for participation (CFP) completed by their Advisory Committee representative. This CFP will contain a patent disclosure question which must be answered. However, the disclosure need not be complete at the time that the participant joins. All disclosures must be complete, however, by the time the specification enters Candidate Recommendation, or a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) will be launched.
See Section 3 [Disclosure] of the CPP.
A. W3C Members with "personal knowledge" of patents that may be essential to the specification in question must disclose the patent number associated with the patent. This includes both Working Group participants as well as any other W3C Members who have such knowledge.
A. No. The disclosure required is based on knowledge that the party has so no active search is required.
A. No.
A. Disclosures should be made as soon as the participant has the relevant knowledge about a patent which might be essential to the specification. If the participant has the relevant knowledge before the end of the group's work, then the participant should not wait to disclose. This will help the Working Group to address any issues that may arise as a result of the disclosure without undue delay.
A. Each time a working group publishes a public working draft (including Last Call, Candidate Recommendation, Proposed Recommendation, and Recommendation documents), all patent disclosures made to date must be made publicly available.
A. Each public working draft should contain a link to a patent disclosure page. That page should contain summaries of the patent disclosures and licensing commitments made by each participant along with the full text of the disclosures originally made. The disclosure page should include both disclosures made by WG participants, as well as any third party patents that are believed to be possibly essential to the specification.
A. Each specification should have one disclosure page, regardless of the source of the disclosures. That fact that the disclosures come from more than one WG should be noted, but does change the basic goal of having a one-to-one mapping between a specification and relevant disclosures. Under the CPP, each disclosure made is expected to be associated with a 'named specification.'
See Section 4 [PAG] of the CPP.
A. A PAG is an ad-hoc group which may be formed to help resolve patent-related problems arising in a Working Group. The PAG is a group made up of the Advisory Committee representatives from the organizations of each participant represented on the Working Group in question.
A. A PAG will be launched when either:
A. A Working Group participant's patent disclosure will be considered incomplete if it fails to answer one of the following statements in the affirmative:
A. The Team contact may convene a PAG at any time if none of the conditions in the previous question are satisfied for any participant. If it is required, then a PAG should be convened by the time the specification enters Candidate Recommendation.
A. No. However, incomplete statements such as these must be completed by the time the specification goes to Candidate Recommendation, otherwise a PAG will be required.
A. If a WG participant makes a RF commitment following the requirements of the CPP but adds additional terms, then the Team will decide whether or not those additional terms require a PAG to be called. The Team will inform the participant as soon as it has been determined that the additional terms could trigger a PAG if not modified or removed. A final decision about calling a PAG will be made by the time the specification enters Candidate Recommendation, as explained in this FAQ.
A. W3C is in the process of developing a comprehensive patent policy. The current Working Draft is still in progress at the Patent Policy Working Group and has not been approved by the Consortium. Once the patent policy is adopted, it will replace the CPP. We expect that the transition from the CPP to the new policy will occur gradually; new Activities will be governed by the new policy while Activities already operating under the CPP rules are expected to remain under the policy under which they began.
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Questions about patent issues arising in a particular Working Group should be sent to the Team contact or Domain Leader responsible for the Working Group. General questions or comments should be sent to the public patent policy comment list www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org (archive).
Last revised by Weitzner $Date: 2002/10/09 16:45:03 $