[rights] OASIS Rights Language TC...Questions

[John Erickson <john_erickson@hplb.hpl.hp.com>]

I am looking forward to meeting everyone at our kick-off meeting on Tuesday!

Regarding Tuesday's agenda, there are certain threads of discussion that are
likely to arise. To get everything out up-front,  I offer here a few questions
that are very likely to arise. Please note that these are not meant to be
disruptive, but rather I believe simply reflect virtually every discussion that
I have had about this rights language process over the past several weeks. I
welcome email discussion, as well as responses during Tuesday's meeting.

1. What is the precise ISO "fast-track" liason status of this TC? Is it direct,
or is it due somehow to XrML's adoption by MPEG --- which of course is ISO?

2. What is the expected relationship of this effort to other fora, including
MPEG, OeBF, WAP, 3GPP and <indecs>2-RDD? Will OASIS be the penultimate forum in
which XrML is put in play, or will there be others?

Specifically, what fora have adopted XrML? Is their adoption of XrML put at risk
by the possibility that the OASIS TC may *change* XrML, in the course of our
authoring effort? Also, what fora have rejected XrML? Why?

3. ContentGuard has "turned over" XrML to the OASIS process. HP and other
participants expect this to be a concensus-driven, open authoring environment.
What does ContentGuard envision their short-term and long-term relationship to
the work product of this group to be? In other words, what is the difference
between ContentGuard "product" and this group's work product? Does ContentGuard
claim any special "veto" power over perturbations to the current, "core" XrML
spec?

4. What is ContentGuard's view its long-term claim to IP in the work product of
this group? ContentGuard has made a substantial contribution to this activity by
submitting XrML; to my knowledge there have been no other submissions, direct or
through "sponsors." But our expectation is that, moving forward, this group may
well produce new innovations. Who owns them? Plus, other parties may make
contributions that have their own IP claims, suggesting a "licensing pool."

There have been public statements by ContentGuard officials suggesting that
their patents cover "all" rights expression languages; should we interpret this
to mean that ContentGuard would consider our work product to fall under this as
well --- regardless of our contributions?

5. What is the full extent of the expected licensing terms? For example, will
adopters of the OASIS standard be required to display the XrML and/or
ContentGuard logo? Will adopters be required to use a particular code set or
tool kit, from a particular vendor?

Thanks!

| John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
| Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
| PO Box 1158, Norwich, Vermont USA 05055
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| john_erickson@hpl.hp.com         AIM/YIM/MSN: olyerickson