Web Standards Project, W3C and MS web patents

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

>From Gregory Aharonian's PATNEWS. jl
---------------

     PATNEWS: More IP insurance; Web to study 
                  Microsoft; WIPO's future of IP

     Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 22:19:31 -0400
    From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
      To: patent-news@world.std.com

!19990428  More IP insurance; Web to study Microsoft; WIPO's future of
IP

                              ====================

    Database, April/May 1999 issue, reports that the Web Standards
Project (WSP), an international coalition of Web developers, has 
asked Microsoft and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to clarify 
whether a recent  Microsoft patent gives the company control of two 
key Web standards developed by W3C.  The patent appears to include 
key concepts used in W3C's Cascading Style Sheets and eXtensible 
Style Language standards, which could potentially require these 
currently open standards to be licensed from Microsoft.  Microsoft 
participated in W3C's development of the standards, and if they are 
covered by the Microsoft patent, WSP believes Microsoft should take 
legal steps to ensure that they remain openly available.  More at 
http://www.webstands.org.

    WSP should instead ask Microsoft to independently have determined
whether or now Microsoft's patent is valid.  Microsoft submitted a
woefully inadequate amount of non-patent prior art with their patent 
application, pretty much ignoring all of the 1980s activities 
involving hypertext and multimedia style sheets.  So before caving 
into Microsoft's demands, WSP/W3C should demand that Microsoft make a 
good faith effort to determine whether they should have been issued 
the patent in the first place.  There is a wave of these types of 
patents, and if the WSP and W3C don't start getting tougher now, they 
will be overwhelmed in the future.  They have been sticking
their heads in the sand too long as it is.

                              ====================


-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org