Re: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)

[Tom Bradford <bradford@dbxmlgroup.com>]

"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote:
> The W3C seems to think otherwise.  Note the
> FAQ quoted earlier about deriving a work
> from HTML and changing a few bits.  We may
> have a different issue there; copyright vs
> assertion of other rights in a copyrighted
> document.  If I understand what you say,
> then the W3C can't enforce those claims.

And I'm saying that if the person produces a document that *IS* the W3C
document with a paragraph added about their little bit, and they're
going to call it HTML 3.2.1, then they're in violation of copyright, but
if I were to write a one paragraph document that describes an addition,
and says to refer to the W3C's HTML specification, then they're not in
violation of copyright.  And unless the term HTML is trademarked, they
could even call it HTML++ if they wanted to.

> Remember, we are debating hypotheticals to
> determine the value of standards.

A standard that nobody wants to live by is not a standard at all.

-- 
Tom Bradford --- The dbXML Project --- http://www.dbxml.org/
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