RE: [emergency] Re: Circle and Polygon

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@intergraph.com>]

Thanks Carl, although the literal reading of that sentence 
is that OGC takes no indemnification responsibility beyond 
it's own due diligence and that members jointly indemnify 
each other.  That is consistent with other policies in other 
consortia.  I am not familiar with OGC policy and am grateful 
for your clarification.

<offtopic>
Do note that if the changes to the USPTO and patent laws 
being promoted under the overhaul of the system proposed 
by Microsoft and others goes forward, it is possible that 
prior art will not be a defense because of the change away 
from "first to invent" to "first to file".  
</offtopic>

len



From: Carl Reed [mailto:creed@opengeospatial.org]

Len -

The OGC has a very well defined intellectual property policy designed to
insure that all of our specifications are freely available, patent free,
and royalty free. We do patent calls, we have members sign various forms,
and so on and so forth. The sentence you reference is provided in our
documents because we do not know what exists in the big wide world outside
the membership. However, that said, we have never had a patent issue or
IPR issue (except once) that we have not been able to resolve by
referencing valid and pertinent prior art. The one instance was in Japan
for WMS version 1.1. In no case anywhere in the world has anyone claimed
any issues WRT IPR/patents and GML. This may be perhaps that much of GML
is grounded in various ISO standards.
In terms of using OGC spec content in OASIS documents, there is not an
issue. Simple need to reference copyright in the OASIS document.