RE: [emergency] Re: Circle and Polygon

["Carl Reed" <creed@opengeospatial.org>]

Len -

<off-topic> Yes, but not for legacy patents. I am sure our legal counsel,
who is nationally recognized as an expert in IPR as it relates to
consortia and standards organizations, is watching this move in Congress
very closely.
Cheers

Carl

> 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.