All the slides of the Beijing conference on “Open Standards, IPR and Innovation” are available on Dennis Ding’s blog

In the context of the DMP I would like to refer to Catherine McCarthy’s (Sun’s Director of Standards Governance) presentation. Mrs McCarthy pointed out how patent owners in Standards Setting Organizations (SSO) use RAND patent policies and “patent thickets” to encumber independent implementors. Her conclusion was that patent policies of SSOs need to encourage more openness by:

• Contracts
• Disclosure of Patent and License Terms required
• Disclosure required early in Standards Development
• Pre-Agreed resolution for failure to comply with patent policy

I think Mrs McCarthy is right. The so-called “patent thickets” are one of the main reasons for the digital media “stalemate” and we need more transparency through improved patent policies.

People who have more experience with standardisation told me that it is unlikely that owners of “essential patents” for DRM systems can be “forced” by an SSO to declare their patents early and license them under transparent conditions. Probably they are also right. SSO (like ISO/IEC) would not be so successful if they interfered too much with the corporate policies of their “customers” (e.g. the licensors of essential DRM patents).

The dilemma is that thanks to some years of DMP work it is likely that we will have a truly open standard for an interoperable DRM platform in the near future. But as of today it is not clear what will happen to implementors of the specification if this standard contains technologies governed by “essential patents”. For corporate entities who can afford patent researches and cross-licensing this may not be a problem. But for independent “clean room implementors” who implement the standard as FOSS just by reading the specification, the undisclosed DRM patents may become a big problem, since FOSS licenses are incompatible with software patents. Possibly this is one of the reasons why FOSS people don’t like DRM.

Stephen Walli wrote about the Open Standards, IPR and Innovation Conference in Beijing 2006. I was in the audience and I fully agree with his findings:

the great thing about the conference was that one felt the Chinese speakers and attendees were definitely attending to learn, but it was NOT to learn how to be more “western”, but rather to learn so as not to make the same mistakes.

Stephen sees some parallels to a debate he had with Microsoft managers about the success of Open Source software in India some years ago and concludes:

First, Open source software isn’t IP hostile. It depends upon strong IP law. Second, countries such as India are service-based today, and that means EVERYONE gets to take home some money rather than focusing the wealth in the hands of a few. (The last thing India wants is a return to the days of the Rajahs with a handful at the top). Lastly, (and this is the kicker), when you scale out the amount of economic growth that’s taking place in countries such as India and China, the last thing they want to do is ship massive amounts of hard currency OUT of their economy to the U.S. for the privilege of developing software to improve business. (And Microsoft is a veritable Hoover in its structuring of its subsidiaries. No amount of in-country R&D re-investment can make up for the amount of money at risk here). Open source rules in a case like this.

Hey, Stephen, these are three good reasons why in China Open Source software will be more successful than proprietary software!

On the other hand, we know very well that sometimes the legal protection for strong IP is not sufficient. I really think that we need gpl-violations.org for China!

What Stephen probably didn’t know is that in the days before the conference the DMP’s 12th general assembly took place in Beijing . An international team including Chinese developers from the University of Beijing is working on Open Source software to protect Open Source IP. The picture shows Prof. Huang Tiejun, chairman of the DMP Ad hoc Group on Reference Software, Conformance and Demonstrations criticising unreasonable fees for software patents.