A key Web standards body has deadlocked over how to handle patented technology that comes with royalties attached, raising questions about the future architecture of the Net.
The dispute, which has simmered since last autumn, could determine what technologies may be considered for common use at the most fundamental levels of Web design.
That in turn will have strategic fallout for high-tech giants struggling for dominance in creating ambitious new technologies such as interactive services--a battle in which Microsoft and IBM stand virtually alone with the clout to push proprietary platforms on everyone else.
Longtime Microsoft foe Sun Microsystems, for one, is trying to ensure that next-generation "Web services" Internet standards are royalty-free, exerting pressure on IBM, Microsoft and others to follow suit.
The latest patent impasse could signal a major shift in this and other standards battles if patented technology is rejected by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). If a final effort to craft a royalty exception is not hammered out by next week, it could die altogether, negotiators close to the talks say.
"It's an awkward moment because there have been various ideas proposed and none of them has gotten to the point that even a majority of the working group is prepared to advance them," said W3C Patent Policy Working Group Chairman Danny Weitzner. "We've been putting out these public summaries and have been getting a lot of feedback that none of this is going to fly."
The W3C found itself in a heated controversy last autumn after members proposed charging royalties for patented technologies that found their way into W3C recommendations. This spring, the W3C retreated from the proposal, pledging to keep its recommendations royalty-free.
Despite that pledge, the W3C is still trying to decide what to do with patented technologies that owners are unwilling to contribute with no strings attached.
As a result, the W3C's Patent Policy Working Group is trying to hammer out an exception to the royalty-free policy. That has patent and royalty critics up in arms, helping mire a committee searching for consensus in an impasse earlier this month.
On a teleconference on 1 July, members discussed a proposal from three unnamed members to establish an exception to the royalty-free policy for a so-called RAND (reasonable and nondiscriminatory) licence. Under the proposal, the W3C would split its recommendation, with the "core" of a specification produced by the W3C without royalties, and patented "extensions" with royalties worked out either by the W3C or other groups.
The proposal did not win sufficient support to advance, and the head of the working group warned that public opinion was siding against anything like it.
The working group is scheduled to meet again from 15 July to 17 July in Paris. W3C's Weitzner predicted that the volume of negative feedback the group has received on the exception--posted to the W3C's own comment threads, among others--would have a marked affect on the Paris meeting.
"I expect we'll have a final decision one way or the other and shortly thereafter have a sort of proposal that people can look at and comment on," said Weitzner. "Or we'll say we're just not doing it."
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