W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes

[Michael Everson]

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/09/20/227242.shtml?tid=126&tid=95&tid=98&tid=99

"Tim Berners-Lee has sent a letter of concern to the president of
ISO about the idea of collecting royalties on...guess what... ISO
language and country codes! According to the letter, the ISO
Commercial Policies Steering Group is proposing a royalty on
commercial use of ISO language, country and currency codes. The
whole idea seems absurd. On what grounds could uttering lang="en-US"
be subject to any intellectual property right that justified any
royalty demand?"

Good question.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com


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[Carl W. Brown]

Michael,

Post by Michael Everson

"Tim Berners-Lee has sent a letter of concern to the president of
ISO about the idea of collecting royalties on...guess what... ISO
language and country codes! According to the letter, the ISO
Commercial Policies Steering Group is proposing a royalty on
commercial use of ISO language, country and currency codes. The
whole idea seems absurd. On what grounds could uttering lang="en-US"
be subject to any intellectual property right that justified any
royalty demand?"

Good question.

It would seem to me that if W3C purchases the ISO standard that under the
terms of the license they can use them in any manner that they see fit. ISO
can not extend the terms of the license after the fact to include royalties
on clients. If they extend the terms of the license then we should stop
using the new ISO standard and use the old codes to set up a W3C standard.

I don't think that the courts will uphold that ISO has the rights to go
after every web page developer for royalties and that the W3C has the right
to expect that either ISO maintains is current policies or that the W3C has
the right to develop a compatible standard using the old codes.

It would be like the Unicode Consortium deciding to start charging for using
the standard.

Carl







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[Hohberger, Clive]

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl W. Brown [mailto:***@xnetinc.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 9:07 AM
To: ***@unicode.org
Subject: RE: W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes


Michael,

Post by Michael Everson

"Tim Berners-Lee has sent a letter of concern to the president of
ISO about the idea of collecting royalties on...guess what... ISO
language and country codes! According to the letter, the ISO
Commercial Policies Steering Group is proposing a royalty on
commercial use of ISO language, country and currency codes. The
whole idea seems absurd. On what grounds could uttering lang="en-US"
be subject to any intellectual property right that justified any
royalty demand?"

Good question.

It would seem to me that if W3C purchases the ISO standard that under the
terms of the license they can use them in any manner that they see fit. ISO
can not extend the terms of the license after the fact to include royalties
on clients. If they extend the terms of the license then we should stop
using the new ISO standard and use the old codes to set up a W3C standard.

I don't think that the courts will uphold that ISO has the rights to go
after every web page developer for royalties and that the W3C has the right
to expect that either ISO maintains is current policies or that the W3C has
the right to develop a compatible standard using the old codes.

It would be like the Unicode Consortium deciding to start charging for using
the standard.

Carl

***************************************************************************
Carl & Michael,
First, I didn't know that a public domain standard could be purchased by a
private organization.

Also, the developers of the standard had to specify and intellectual
property (IP) that they owned that was relevant to the and either give up
rights to it for use in the standard or make available fair and equitable
license of that IP to anyone requesting it for purpose of using that ISO
standard. I don't know that that process gives ISO a right to sell or
sublicense those IP rights.

The only intellectual property right created by the ISO standard that I know
of is copyright (c) of the complete standard itself, which is owned by ISO
and gives them the right to sell and distribute the standard to raise
revenue. ISO has licensed certain national agencies like ANSI and companies
like Global Engineering Documents to sell them on ISO's behalf, with a fee
paid to ISO.

Can someone please explain to me what the ISO Commercial Policies Steering
Group is, and what it is empowered to do?
Clive
21 Sep 2003

************************************
Clive P Hohberger, PhD
Corporate VP, Technology Development
& Director of Patent Affairs
Office: [phone]
Cellular: [phone]
FAX: [phone]
E-mail: ***@zebra.com
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[Michael Everson]

"Standards Organizations Express Concern
About Royalty Fees for ISO Codes"
http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2003-09-20-a.html

And he quotes the ISO Commercial Policy Steering Group:

"The ISO community should also be compensated for providing the
intellectual property required to incorporate the value-added
features into the product."

Golly, does that mean they'll pay people like me if they get
royalties from people using ISO/IEC 10646?

Heh. Of course not.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com


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[Curtis Clark]

Golly, does that mean they'll pay people like me if they get royalties
from people using ISO/IEC 10646?

The current economic paradigm: "Steal. Sell."
--
Curtis Clark http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Mockingbird Font Works http://www.mockfont.com/



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[Jony Rosenne]

Much of the ISO work is done in national bodies by volunteers such as
myself. I don't recall ever being asked to assign any IPRs to the NB or to
ISO. All I my original work in this area has been put by me in the public
domain free of any constraint, by being posted to lists such as these.

My own contributions are not significant, my purpose is to point out that
the ISO claims are absurd and probably invalid.

Jony

Post by Hohberger, Clive
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 7:38 PM
Subject: W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes

"Standards Organizations Express Concern
About Royalty Fees for ISO Codes"
http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2003-09-20-a.html

"The ISO community should also be compensated for providing the
intellectual property required to incorporate the value-added
features into the product."
Golly, does that mean they'll pay people like me if they get
royalties from people using ISO/IEC 10646?
Heh. Of course not.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com

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[Eric Muller]

See also <http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5079256.html>.

Eric.




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