Decentralized Identifier Working Group - IPR

Licensing Commitments

Participants in this group have made certain licensing commitments by joining the group. In addition to these Participants, non-participating W3C Member may have made licensing commitments.

W3C Members not participating in this group who wish to make the same licensing commitments for specifications developed by this group may do so through a Join form for licensing commitments from non-participating Members.

Other parties making a substantive contribution to the work of the group need to make a Royalty-Free patent commitment, as described in section 6.2.6 of the Process. Team contacts will provide instructions for recording the non-participant licensing commitment before the contribution can be accepted.

Participation

W3C Member Organizations

• Adobe
• Anonyome Labs, Inc.
• Arizona State University
• CANTON CONSULTING
• China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT)
• Conexxus
• Danube Tech GmbH
• DappWorks Technology Inc.
• Department of Homeland Security
• Deronyan, LLC
• Digital Bazaar
• Digital Contract Design
• Dyne.org
• Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)
• Fundacion CTIC
• Futurewei Technologies
• Government Technology Agency
• GS1
• Identity.com
• IDnow GmbH
• INSIGHT - The Centre for Data Analytics
• Intel Corporation
• Jiangsu TPBlock Technology Co., Ltd. （江苏第三极区块链科技有限公司）
• Kaiser Permanente
• Keio University
• Legendary Requirements
• Lenovo
• mesur.io
• Ministry of Digital Affairs, Taiwan
• OISTE Foundation
• OpenLink Software Inc.
• Protocol Labs
• Spruce Systems, Inc.
• Switchchord
• The Washington Post
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• Universities Admissions Centre
• University of Oxford
• Vidos
• ZIIOT

Note: Log in to see links to organizations if you have member access

Invited Experts

• Christopher Allen
• Daniel Burnett
• Gabe Cohen
• Stephen Curran
• Kim Duffy
• Daniel Hardman
• Charles Lehner
• Drummond Reed
• Kaliya Young
• Dmitri Zagidulin

Team members

• Kazuyuki Ashimura
• Pierre-Antoine Champin
• Ivan Herman
• Ruoxi Ran
• Naomi Yoshizawa

See also the list of individuals participating in this group.

The Call for Participation for this group was announced on 2024-04-25; see the Patent Policy FAQ for information about continued participation before re-joining the group.

Specifications published by the Group

The following is the list of specifications produced by the Decentralized Identifier Working Group that have associated disclosures obligations, and possible licensing obligations under the W3C Patent Policy.

Documents under the W3C Patent Policy

Document	Patent Disclosure	Patent Exclusion
Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0	disclose	exclude
Decentralized Identifier Resolution (DID Resolution) v0.3	disclose	exclude

Documents not/no longer under the W3C Patent Policy

Document	Patent Disclosure	Patent Exclusion
Use Cases and Requirements for Decentralized Identifiers	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
Decentralized Identifier Extensions	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
The Plain CBOR Representation v1.0	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
DID Method Rubric v1.0	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
DID Implementation Guide v1.0	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
DID Methods	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
DID Document Property Extensions	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
DID Resolution Extensions	disclose	Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)

Patent Disclosures and Claim Exclusions

This section summarizes patent disclosures by participants in W3C's Decentralized Identifier Working Group as required by section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

W3C takes no position regarding either:

• the validity or scope of any intellectual property right or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology, or
• the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available from those not participating in this group.

Where disclosure is required by a W3C Member, the AC Representative makes the disclosure.

Anyone else may also make a disclosure.

Known Disclosures

No patent disclosures have been made for any specifications of this group.

How to Make a Patent Disclosure

W3C Members and Invited Experts (including those not participating in this group) wishing to disclose a patent for any specification produced by the Decentralized Identifier Working Group should use the Decentralized Identifier Working Group patent disclosure form.

Disclosures from the general public should be sent to the W3C Staff.

For specifications developed under the W3C Patent Policy, parties that commit to the W3C Royalty-Free Licensing Terms are not required to disclose patents. Any party (not just the Working Group Participants) may commit to the W3C Royalty-Free Licensing Terms and may do so by following the instructions in the next section.

Claim Exclusions

Only Decentralized Identifier Working Group participants may exclude patent claims concerning specifications developed under the W3C Patent Policy, per section 4 of the W3C Patent Policy. To make an exclusion, participants should use the Decentralized Identifier Working Group patent claim exclusion form, but only after first disclosing the patent.

Exclusion Opportunities

The Patent Policy FAQ provides detailed information about exclusion opportunities, that is, when a Working Group Participant can exclude a patent claim.

Each exclusion opportunity has a duration. See section 4.1 of the W3C Patent Policy for information on how the exclusion deadline is calculated.

At each exclusion opportunity, Participants may exclude patent claims with respect to a body of text. The Exclusion Draft is the reference body of text for the current exclusion opportunity.

Note: At each new exclusion opportunity (e.g., in the case of a second Candidate Recommendation Snapshot), exclusions are only with respect to differences since the previous reference body of text. These differences may be less than an entire document, and the summary below does not address that granularity. Also, in some edge cases (discussed in the FAQ), Participants, depending on when they joined the Working Group, will have different Exclusion Drafts; the summary below does not reflect this case.

Exclusion Opportunities

Decentralized Identifier (DID) Resolution and DID URL Dereferencing v1.0

Call for exclusion started on 2024-11-28, opportunity until 2025-04-27

Additional Licensing Information

As described in section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy:

All Working Group participants are encouraged to provide a contact from which licensing information can be obtained and other relevant licensing information. Any such information will be made publicly available along with the patent disclosures for the Working Group in question.

Patent holders may:

1. Provide additional licensing information for documents produced by this Working Group
2. Provide the same additional licensing information for all documents with associated licensing obligations produced by this Working Group, or
3. Provide additional licensing information for any W3C document with associated licensing obligations produced by any W3C Working Group under the W3C Patent Policy.

Such licensing information should be sent to the W3C Staff.

Please recall that, per section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy, a W3C Royalty-Free license:

may not impose any further conditions or restrictions on the use of any technology, intellectual property rights, or other restrictions on behavior of the licensee, but may include reasonable, customary terms relating to operation or maintenance of the license relationship such as the following: choice of law and dispute resolution.