http://www.sltrib.com/2003/May/05262...nday/60158.asp

The Web's key standards organization wants to curtail the influence of large companies by requiring them to make key Internet-related patents available without charge.

A new policy, announced Wednesday by the World Wide Web Consortium, requires participants in standards working groups to agree ahead of time to grant royalty-free licenses to any patents incorporated into Web standards.

"It allows the Web to continue to develop with the kind of innovative energy it has had until now," said Daniel Weitzner, chairman of the consortium's Patent Policy Working Group. "We want to be open to the best technical ideas from any source large or small, whether they have big patent portfolios or don't."

If companies participating in setting Web standards don't want specific patents used they must say so upfront.

The Web consortium has faced patent disputes before. One patent claim delayed development of standards for letting Web sites create machine-readable privacy policies.

Other standards groups, including the Internet Engineering Task Force, do permit patents that require royalties.

But the Web consortium resisted allowing large patent-holders to steer the process and profit from its results.

-- The Associated Press