W3C patent plan draws protests
But a new proposal may now open a few cracks in that wall, allowing companies to enforce patents based around those technologies and to potentially charge a royalty fee to developers who use them.
The W3C's Patent Policy Framework, more commonly referred to as the "reasonable and non-discriminatory" (RAND) licensing proposal, acknowledges a central conflict to the standardization process: Companies that spend serious time and effort coming up with the technology behind the standards may be reluctant to simply give away the rights to what they consider their intellectual property.
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