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
