Re: Intellectual Property Trap.

Neophytos Iacovou (iacovou@arcwelder.micro.umn.edu)
Wed, 13 Dec 1995 17:26:48 -0600 (CST)

Bazemore Jonathan R writes:
>
> If Microsoft allows a "license for its intellectual
> property, free of charge," does that not force the licensee
> to implicitly grant that Microsoft does intellectually own
> the standard/code in question? And if that is the case,

This is what we are talking about. Is the "license for its intellectual
property, free of charge," about the ActiveVRML protocol or the software
implemtation. Microsoft hasn't given a solid answer on this. They always
duck the question and talk about the software when asked to clarify this
in the past.

I think most of us agree that if the above line deals with the source
code then we can live with that. Sounds fair. But we want the protocol
in the PD. Or at least, the version of ActiveVRML we decide should be
associated with VRML should be in the PD (like what happened to
OpenInventor - we can modify the VRML spec but at the same time SGI can
modify the OpenInventor spec).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neophytos Iacovou Distributed Computing Services
University of Minnesota 100 Union St. SE
email: iacovou@boombox.micro.umn.edu Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA

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