Free Protocols Foundation
www.freeProtocols.org
Facilitating the Creation, Promotion, &
Maintenance of Free Protocols
Protocol Patents Are Harmful
Software Patents Are Harmful
The presence of patented components within a protocol is extremely
undesirable. The purpose of a protocol is to define an agreed-upon
expected behavior, thus providing common ground for cooperation within
an industry. The presence of patents within a protocol places
restrictions on its implementation and usage, and therefore serves to
undermine this purpose.
The Free Protocols Foundation (FPF) is an independent public forum,
dedicated to the support of patent-free protocols. We do this by means
of the following major activities:
- By providing an independent, external forum in which an Author
may make an initial declaration that a protocol is intended to be
patent-free.
- By defining a set of patent-related Working Group procedures
which ensure that the resulting protocol will remain
functionally patent-free. Any development organization is free to adopt
these procedures with regard to its own protocols.
- By providing an independent, external forum in which a Working
Group may make a public declaration that it follows these
procedures.
- Whenever patent rights are asserted with respect to any protocol
which has been declared patent-free to the FPF, by publishing a
statement of the patent right assertion.
- Whenever patent rights are known to exist with respect to a
protocol which has been declared patent-free to the FPF, by assisting
in obtaining from the patent-holder a non-restrictive license to
implement the patented process as part of the protocol.
- By acting as a clearing house for information and articles
relating to protocol patent-freedom.
- By supporting the creation and development of patent-free
alternative protocols to existing patented protocols.
- By supporting fights against invalid software patents in the courts.
The FPF provides its free publication service to any company,
organization, or individual wishing to make a patent-free declaration.
The FPF also provides a public notification service of these
declarations. All services of the FPF are free of charge.
- Other organization involved in this cause:
- Most recent battlegrounds:
Please send comments or problems about the FreeProtocols web site to webmaster@freeprotocols.org
Revision: 1.2 -- Last Updated: 2000/03/23 19:40:54