Rick:
There are several issues with this IP statement from Adobe that concern
Lexmark.
1) This grant is only for the small part of PDF that is PDFax or PDF/is.
In order to achieve the largest possible number of implementations, this
license should allow both printers and PDF creators to create and consume
as much of PDF 1.4 as possible. It seems clear to me that if Adobe
provides a Royalty Free patent for all of PDF 1.4 then, at least the
printer manufacturers, would have additional incentive to support PDF/is as
the market for it grows. This broader license would seem to be consisted
with Adobe's publicly stated goal to broaden support for PDF wherever
possible.
2) The field of use restriction stated in:
"Accordingly, Adobe agrees to provide a Royalty Free License to all Essential Claims solely for the purpose of implementing the IPP FAX Standard."
will prevent the implementation of IPPFax by members of the Free Software
Foundation whose work is licensed under the GNU General Public License.
According to Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University Law School,
General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation:
"Section 7 of the GNU GPL is intended to prevent the distribution of
software which appears to be Free (because it is released under a copyright
license guaranteeing the freedoms to use, copy, modify, and redistribute)
but which cannot, in fact, be modified and redistributed because of patent
license restrictions that limit the use of patent claims practiced by the
software to a particular purpose. Though other Free Software licenses may
not happen to contain provisions equivalent to GPL's Section 7, this does
not imply that programs released under those licenses will be Free Software
if the patent claims contributed "royalty-free" to the standard those
programs implement are limited to a particular field of use."
Considering that one of the major providers of IPP, CUPS, is licensed under
GNU GPL, this field of use restriction is a major issue.
3) All references to "IEEE Printer Working Group" and the like should be
changed to "The Printer Working Group, a program of the IEEE-ISTO" when
first referenced and then just to "Printer Working Group" subsequently.
This list may not be exhaustive. Review by Lexmark legal counsel has not
happened yet. This is simply my review. We are continuing to review it.
**********************************************
Don Wright don@lexmark.com
Member, IEEE SA Standards Board
PatCom Chair, SCC Liaison
Member, IEEE-ISTO Board of Directors
f.wright@ieee.org / f.wright@computer.org
Director, Alliances & Standards
Lexmark International
740 New Circle Rd
Lexington, Ky 40550
859-825-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax)
**********************************************
"Rick Seeler" <rseeler@adobe.com>@pwg.org on 11/15/2002 08:05:29 PM
Sent by: owner-ifx@pwg.org
To: <ifx@pwg.org>
cc:
Subject: IFX> The long awaited IP statement from Adobe.
IFXers,
Here is the IP statement Adobe has created specifically for the PWG with
respect to the use of PDF in an IPPFAX specification.
Let me know if you have any questions.
-Rick
(See attached file: Patent Clarification IEEE v1a.pdf)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Dec 13 2002 - 10:48:04 EST