Storm clouds are gathering around the issue of Internet patents, and at least one influential voice is calling on the industry to halt or closely guard their proliferation.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, spoke out on the issue during a keynote address to the Eighth International World Wide Web Conference in Toronto last week, saying the unchecked awarding of Internet-related patents poses a danger to the universality of the Web.
"I appreciate the reasons why the patent system was set up, but there is a really big problem here," Berners-Lee told the congregation. "The bar for innovation seems too low. You are able to take an existing social practice and write software to do it and get a patent."
Berners-Lee said lawyers are rushing to patent technologies without adequate research for prior art, or they are attempting to apply patents beyond their original intent.
"The challenge is to prevent us from becoming completely paralyzed by fear, uncertainty and doubt," he added. "I don't think it's very conducive to people working together to create a universal Web."
Berners-Lee stressed that he was speaking as an individual, and not as a director of the World Wide Web Consortium. However, his statements were in line with a W3C effort launched a week earlier to try to quash an Internet patent.
The W3C called on its members to bring forward examples of prior art, or technologies that predate a push-related patent Intermind received in January.
Intermind's patent, 5,862,325, covers the way information is automatically sent from a server to a client. The W3C fears it may impede efforts to establish a Platform for Privacy Preferences standard, which lets clients and servers negotiate how a client's personal information can be used and distributed.
It is the first time the W3C has attempted to have a patent ruled invalid.
Intermind President Brian McManus said the W3C's move is "troubling to say the least," but he defended his company's right to patent technology it has spent years developing and benefit from its research. "They've dropped the ball on this one," he said. "We're pretty confident we've exhausted the research for prior art."
John Patrick, vice president of Internet technology at IBM, also defended the right of a company to patent and license Internet-related technologies.
IBM regularly wins the contest for filing the most patents with the U.S. Patent Office each year.
"There's a myth that patents aren't always good and that, if there's something that will be helpful to society, it should be free," Patrick said. "I don't buy it. I think the glass is half-full, not half-empty."
Berners-Lee said one solution could involve companies' creating a code of ethics, where they would not patent or restrict the use of technologies that could expand the use and universality of the Internet.
