IPR WG related news article

["Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <bwijnen@lucent.com>]

Anonymous backer funds patent foe 
An unnamed sponsor gives open-source advocate Bruce Perens a $50,000 annuity to support his work against software patents that he says stymie industry standards.

April 9, 2003, 4:00 AM PDT

Details at: http://news.com.com/2100-1032-996070.html?tag=fd_top
It includes this text:

Corporations with large patent portfolios have pressured standards organizations, even if they have a stated preference for royalty-free technologies, to make exceptions for "reasonable and nondiscriminatory," or RAND, licenses. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently turned back an attempt to carve out a broad RAND exception. Perens said the final compromise did provide for some RAND exceptions but only under stringent conditions.

Perens has now turned his attention to other standards groups, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

In recent weeks, an IETF working group voted down a Perens-backed proposal to eliminate the group's longstanding RAND exception. Perens in November threatened to pack the IETF working group with like-minded members, but later backed down from the threat.

"I decided not to pack the working group at this time," Perens said. "What I'm going to do, now that I have funding, is to write a series of Internet drafts that lay out the real problems with patents in terms I think the IETF can understand. If we don't get movement on those, we may have to look at more drastic measures."

Perens says the $50,000 yearly grant will let him spend a quarter of his time working on the IETF and other standards groups, including the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), to urge the adoption of royalty-free policies. He also plans to become an official member of the W3C, which charges a $5,000 membership fee. 

Thanks,
Bert