Fwd: Legal implications of using Microformats

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Manu Sporny <mspornydigitalbazaar.com>
Date: Apr 27, 2007 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: [uf-new] Legal implications of using
Microformats
To: "For discussion of new microformats."
<microformats-newmicroformats.org>


Brian, to answer your question -
(from http://microformats.org/discuss/mail
/microformats-new/2007-April/000242.html)

our company was under the impression
that all of this copyright and patent policy had been worked
out. After
speaking with our legal team, it is clear to us that is has
not been. We
cannot be first adopters of Microformats unless there is a
clear
statement on the Microformats pages stating something to the
effect of:

All authors provide these microformat proposals, drafts and
specifications under a cc-by-1.0 or later license (or
something to that
effect). All authors do not claim any patent rights to
concepts
described in proposals, drafts and specifications.

--- if you can give-us any other information, who exactly
the company
is, etc and any other information from the legal team we can
attempt
to work around these problems or debunk the FUD.

-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk
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Brian Suda wrote:
> --- if you can give-us any other information, who
exactly the company
> is, etc and any other information from the legal team
we can attempt
> to work around these problems or debunk the FUD.

Our company is Digital Bazaar, Inc. we provide digital
content delivery
services (buying and selling music, TV, film and books
online) and want
to use several Microformats in development for Bitmunk as
well as
integration into Firefox, Songbird, and Democracy Media
Player (we're
currently talking with each team about Microformats).

Bitmunk website:
http://www.bitmunk.com/n
ews/

DB corporate website:
http://www.digitalbazaa
r.com/

For those of you that don't know where this discussion
started - it was
started by Guy Fraser on microformats-new:

http://microformats.org/discuss/mail
/microformats-new/2007-April/000241.html

The concern is that there is no standard copyright or patent
statement
or policy that applies to the entire Microformats website.
Specifically
the examples, formats, brainstorming, proposal, draft and
specification
pages have a mix of copyright statements (some not at all).
This can
cause problems if an individual authors a Microformat
without releasing
copyright or patent claims.

Microformats can stick around in the "draft"
process for a long time.
Often they have a statement of "intent" to release
it under a certain
copyright/royalty-free licensing model. "Intent to
provide under no
restrictions" is very different from "provide
under no restrictions".

This could affect anybody implementing Microformats like
so:

1. Author pulls together examples, formats, brainstorming,
proposal and
draft of a Microformat with "intent" to release
royalty-free.
2. Author applies for patent without notifying Microformats
community.
3. Invented Microformat gets very popular over the next 2
years.
4. Author decides not to follow through with
"intent" and instead
decides to sue for patent infringement. OR Author decides
not to
relinquish copyright and becomes a nuisance to the
community.

While this will probably not happen, a simple change to the
Microformats
wiki can ENSURE that it doesn't happen.

-- manu
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