An outline proposal

[robert_weir at us.ibm.com]

"Horton, Gareth" <Gareth_Horton at datawatch.com> wrote on 10/19/2010 
04:55:37 PM:

> 
> Alex - this is what makes defining the features that we need before 
> the IPR declaration a rather useless exercise, since the PKWARE 
> statement implies there are more features than they explicitly state
> which subject to licensing. 
> 
> I don't see the point in delaying this and neither do the ISO 
directives.
> 
> Can anyone give me a good reason why PKWARE would object to doing 
> this? It seems to be completely innocuous. 
> 

I think you are wrong about ISO not suggesting delay.  In fact the 
Directives explicitly say that disclosures might not "be possible when the 
first draft text appears since at this time, the text might be still too 
vague or subject to subsequent major modifications."  We don't even have a 
draft of a text in front of us.   We have no conformance language.  We 
don't even have a scope statement in front of us.  An initial ballot of a 
scope recently failed. How can it possibly be more "vague and subject to 
subsequent major modifications" than now?

And remember, patents read on _required_ methods.  So a document format 
that allows an <sound> tag doesn't require a patent, and even one that 
allows a the <sound> tag to reference an MP3 file does not necessarily 
require a patent.  But one that requires that an application encode/decode 
an MP3 file does require a patent. 

My point is that even knowing the range of technologies that might be 
considered in this standard does not tell what patents are relevant.  The 
Directives speak about, " Patents, the use of which may be required to 
practice or implement the Recommendation | Deliverable being considered". 
The key word is "required".  So it is going to come down to the specific 
conformance language to tell us what is required and what is optional. 
Until you get to that point, there is really not anything to comment out.

I suggest we instead start talking about what we think should be required. 
 And a good feel for that might come from examining what is required by 
the standards we ostensibly are trying to support: ODF, OOXML, EPUB, 
Widgets, etc.   That might then give us something we can speak more 
sensibly about, in terms disclosures.

-Rob