Sun IPR statement on XPointer

["Eve L. Maler" <eve.maler@east.sun.com>]

Thanks to everyone who sent comments on the XPointer terms and conditions 
that Sun published.  We have gone through all the comments carefully and 
developed the IPR statement attached below.  I just submitted this to W3C.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

	Eve

			*		*		*

This policy shall apply only to Sun's Essential Patent Claims (as defined
below) that read on the XML Pointer Language specification ("XPointer").
This undertaking is valid only as long as XPointer either is on the
Recommendation track or has been adopted as a Recommendation.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. ("Sun") agrees it will grant royalty-free licenses,
under reasonable terms and conditions, and on a non-discriminatory basis,
under Sun's essential patent claims to make, use, sell, offer for sale, or
import implementations of XPointer. One precondition of any license granted
to a party shall be the party's agreement to grant royalty-free licenses to
Sun and other companies to make, use, sell, offer for sale, or import
implementations of XPointer under the party's essential patent claims. Sun
expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

Definitions:

1. "Sun's Essential Patent Claims" means claims of a patent or patent
application that would necessarily be infringed upon implementation of
XPointer and that are owned or controlled by Sun at any time while XPointer
is on the Recommendation track or after XPointer has been adopted as a
Recommendation.  A claim is necessarily infringed hereunder only when it is
not possible to avoid infringing it because there is no commercially
plausible non-infringing alternative for implementing XPointer, including
the protocols, application program interfaces, service provider interfaces,
and/or data structures disclosed with particularity in XPointer in order to
enable products to interoperate, interconnect or communicate as defined
within XPointer.

2. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Sun's Essential Patent Claims shall not
include any claims other than as set forth above even if contained in the
same patent as essential claims; or that read solely on any implementations
of any portion of XPointer that are not required by XPointer, or that, if
licensed, would require a payment of royalties by the licensor to
unaffiliated third parties. Moreover, essential patent claims shall not
include (i) any enabling technologies that may be necessary to make or use
any product or portion thereof that complies with XPointer but are not
themselves expressly set forth in XPointer (e.g., semiconductor
manufacturing technology, compiler technology, object oriented technology,
basic operating system technology, and the like); or (ii) the implementation
of other published standards developed elsewhere and merely referred to in
the body of XPointer, or (iii) any portions of any product and any
combinations thereof the purpose or function of which is not required for
compliance with XPointer. For purposes of this definition, XPointer shall be
deemed to include only architectural and interconnection requirements and
shall not include any implementation examples unless such implementation
examples are expressly identified as being included as part of XPointer.
--
Eve Maler                                             +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems XML Technology Development  eve.maler @ east.sun.com