Re: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)

[Justin Couch <justin@vlc.com.au>]

> Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com wrote:

> If BigBozoCo claims to implement an ISO standard (ISO 9000,
> maybe), and it turns out that they are just kinda sorta
> working within the "spirit" of ISO 9000 but don't ACTUALLY
> have people waste their valuable time filling out those
> boring documents, someone (ISO? a government? a disgruntled
> customer?) is likely to take legal action against them.  

There are two possiblities. AFAIK the ISO group has no legal standing
where you can take someone to court for "violating our specification".
However! There are other ways they can take them on - false advertising,
use of trademarked symbols infringement (that red/silver logo with the
ticks on it) etc. These are all civil actions. (Have a look at how Sun
handles the Jini and Java compatibility issues - you effectively license
the trademarked logo and nothing else). 

> if BigBozoCo's claims to implement the W3C XML Schema spec, and
> it turns out that they didn't actually have the developers waste their
> valuable time implementing all those boring

Again, you could take them on in a civil action - false/deceptive
advertising and more. Just depends on how big your pockets are v
company. At least here in Oz the deceptive advertising penalties are
really stiff and so discourages companies from doing that.


-- 
Justin Couch                         http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
Freelance Java Consultant                  http://www.yumetech.com/
Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer                  http://www.j3d.org/
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