During the last conference call of the Member Section
Steering Committee, we had a lengthy discussion with OASIS staff concerning the
issue of “mismatched” TC IP policies. John Messing identified the issue and
brought it to our attention. The
Electronic Court Filing TC has long taken a very
strong position concerning IP interests in our specifications – we have
flat out stated that we will not include material in our specification if there
are proprietary IP rights attached to it. Courts should not have to pay royalties
for the use of a technology standard, we have said.
The DSS TC
does not follow our IP approach. They
use the standard OASIS RAND policy – that contributors
to a specification must agree to reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing of
their IP rights in a TC standard. In fact, there have been several
statements of IP claims filed with the DSS TC concerning the Entity Seal specification.
This creates another layer of issues concerning the use or
requirement of the Entity Seal within Court Filing Blue. The discussion during the Steering
Committee call suggested a number of avenues that we could pursue. This is my memory and summary of that
discussion. I invite other Steering
Committee members to amplify or correct the following:
- We will
be citing to a large number of other OASIS standards in our Court Filing
Blue specification – e.g., ebXML, UBL, Entity Seal. We will make use of the WS-I
standards. We use the GJXDM. We
refer to ISO standards. All of
our work derives from the Schema standard of the W3C.
In fact
we have no clue what IP issues might lurk within or might have surfaced
regarding all those standards. We do know that all
of the standards developing bodies responsible for creating them did not follow
our IP approach, which is clearly not a universal standard. However, we have all agreed to the
importance of referencing and using other standards for constructing Court
Filing Blue. Modern electronic
exchange processes depend completely on the use of such
specifications. It makes no
sense to reinvent standards that work perfectly well already. In fact, interoperability would be harmed if we did not use them. The best that we can do in this
situation is to acknowledge in our specification that we make no
representations concerning the IP that might pertain to such standards and
that users of our specification should find out for themselves if they
have any concerns.
- We
could review the existence of IP claims against every other standard that
we use and either disclose such claims or refuse
to use that standard because of the existence of such claims. Remember, though, that an IP claim
against a standard is no more than that – a claim. It may actually be groundless. And the
fact that we do not find IP claims is hardly conclusive that there are
none. And
we do not have the time or the resources for such research.
- We
could fudge on our specification by using language such as “use a
standard for locking down the complete contents of an electronic message using
digital signature technology, such as the OASIS DSS
TC’s Entity Seal specification currently
in committee draft form.”
- We
could make the use of other standards, or of other standards that we know
have IP claims against them, non-normative with the use of language such
as “implementers might consider using X” or “we recommend the use of X,”
with a disclaimer about the IP status of the specification.
- We
could attempt to obtain royalty free licensing commitments from the
claimants against a particular specification that might figure prominently
in our work, such as the DSS.
I regret to inject yet another troublesome issue into what
is already a difficult, extensive and complicated agenda. But it is
clearly there and we need to take it on.
I invite comments and suggestions.
John
M. Greacen
Greacen
Associates, LLC
HCR 78 Box 23
Regina, New Mexico 87046
505-289-2164
505-289-2163
(fax)
505-780-1450
(cell)
john@greacen.net