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   RE: [xml-dev] Patents

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Hi all ,
I think this is recent development in IBM's  Patent issue
 
IBM on Thursday said it will not seek royalties on patented technology that is part of an e-commerce Web standard.

At issue is a Web standard called Electronic Business XML, or ebXML, which allows companies in many industries to communicate over the Web. It was a standard created by a United Nations organization and by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, or OASIS, a consortium of tech companies that includes IBM, Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems and Hewlett-Packard.

IBM's patent claim came to light as part of an intellectual property disclosure filed with OASIS in late March.

An IBM representative on Thursday said the company owns one patent in the ebXML standard and has another patent pending. But the company has decided not to charge royalties on the patents.

"We are making this at zero cost," the IBM representative said. "OASIS policy requires companies to disclose patents. IBM followed the OASIS procedure."

An OASIS representative could not be reached for comment.

ebXML was designed to make it easier for companies in common industries to communicate and as a potential replacement for older, more expensive data-exchange technology called Electronic Data Interchange. But the adoption of the standard has so far been lukewarm, said analyst Mike Gilpin of Giga Information Group.

Over the past half year, the industry has debated over whether companies should be allowed to charge royalties on technologies used in standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), for example, retreated from a proposal that would have allowed companies to claim patent rights and demand royalties for technologies used in its standards. A final ruling on the matter is expected later this year. W3C standards have not been based on patented technology, or the holders of the patents have chosen not to enforce patents to allow the standards to be widely adopted.

Opponents of the proposal to charge "reasonable and nondiscriminatory," or RAND, royalties argue that it would put too much power in the hands of large software companies that are heavily involved in creating standards and would force users of standards containing patented technology to pay royalties to patent holders. They contend technology used in standards should be made free from patent royalties.

IBM was among the companies that were on the W3C working group that created the W3C proposal to allow companies to charge royalties on its patents. An IBM executive last fall said the company has historically worked in both royalty-free and RAND environments, and chooses to use one or the other on a case-by-case basis, depending on the technologies.


Cheers

Mangesh

Siemens Information System Ltd

i2 Group

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Lomas [mailto:jeff.lomas@oasis-open.org]
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 7:33 PM
To: Ronald Bourret
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Patents

Here is some follow-up on IBM's ebXML patent claims.

http://lists.ebxml.org/archives/ebxml/200204/msg00004.html

Jeff

Ronald Bourret wrote:
3CBF547D.D787F060@rpbourret.com type="cite">
Ramin Firoozye wrote:

Or to have a sense of humor... If you actually read the text of patent
#6,368,227 (it was lunchtime, what can I say (:-), you'll see that it's a
pretty decent work of satire (esp. the last paragraph). See for yourself. An
excerpt is attached.

One hopes this is the case. Having just read the articles on IBM's ebXML
patents and thinking about what any of the large database companies
could do to my own work with just a threatening letter, my humor sensors
are a bit underpowered on this issue at the moment.

(In all fairness, I suspect that the lawyer just wanted his kid to have
something cool to show his playmates. I doubt a seven-year-old would
appreciate the street theater involved and the lawyer doesn't seem to be
interested in making a point about the system.)

Then again, if you don't defend a patent you could lose all rights to it.
You could head for the park today and force the young inventor to come after
you with a legal writ (:-)

Which is the best suggestion yet. It's a nice day out and Ellie's
tolerance for me being at the computer is limited at best.

C'mon kid. Let's go violate some patents :)

-- Ron

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