W3C Group Participation Home

Voice Browser Working Group Patent Policy Status

Participation

W3C Member Organizations
  • Aspect Communications (1 representative)
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences (1 representative)
  • Chinese University of Hong Kong (2 representatives)
  • Comverse Technology (1 representative)
  • Deutsche Telekom AG, T-Com (2 representatives)
  • France Telecom (7 representatives)
  • Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories (11 representatives)
  • Hewlett Packard Company (1 representative)
  • IBM Corporation (2 representatives)
  • iFLYTEK (2 representatives)
  • International Webmasters Association / HTML Writers Guild (IWA-HWG) (1 representative)
  • Intervoice, Inc. (8 representatives)
  • Korea Association of Information & Telecommunication (2 representatives)
  • Loquendo, S.p.A. (3 representatives)
  • Microsoft Corp. (2 representatives)
  • MITRE Corporation (1 representative)
  • Nuance Communications, Inc. (3 representatives)
  • SandCherry, Inc. (2 representatives)
  • Toshiba Corporation (2 representatives)
  • Voxeo (8 representatives)
  • Voxpilot Ltd. (1 representative)
Invited Experts
  • Deborah Dahl
  • Fang Hu
  • Wataru Imatake
  • Torbjörn Lager
  • Jim Larson
  • Judith Markowitz
  • Kenneth Rehor
Team members
  • Kazuyuki Ashimura
  • Matt Womer

Join or leave this group (see general instructions for joining this group). Advisory Committee Representatives of participating Members may also nominate or change representatives in the group.

The Call for Participation for this group was announced on 30 March 2007; see the Patent Policy FAQ for information about continued participation before re-joining the group.

Licensing Commitments

Participants in this group have made certain licensing commitments by joining the group. See the details about licensing commitments from current and past Participants and other parties.

W3C Members not participating in this group who wish to make the same licensing commitments for specifications developed by this group may do so through a form for licensing commitments from non-participating Members. Other parties who wish to make the licensing commitments for this group should consult the instructions for non-Members to make licensing commitments for this group.

Specifications for this group

The following is the list of specifications produced by the Voice Browser Working Group that have associated disclosures obligations, and possibly licensing obligations under the W3C Patent Policy.

Specification Policy Disclose Exclude Add licensing information
Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0 Requirements CPP Disclose No exclusions since governed by the CPPN/A
CSS3 Speech Module W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 2.1 W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0 W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0 W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction 1.0 W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1 W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information

See the detailed information on how to disclose a patent, how to exclude a patent claim and how to add licensing terms below.

Note: If a specification does not appear in this table, the group may have identified it as being "informative only." To add or modify an item in this table, please refer to the IPP instructions.

Patent Disclosures and Claim Exclusions

This section summarizes patent disclosures by participants in W3C's Voice Browser Working Group as required by section 6 of the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. Note: This disclosure mechanism applies to all W3C Working Groups after 15 February 2004, per the Patent Policy Transition Procedure.

W3C takes no position regarding either:

  1. the validity or scope of any intellectual property right or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology, or
  2. the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available from those not participating in this group.

W3C Members are obligated to disclose a patent when they receive a request for disclosure and have personal knowledge of the patent under the following conditions:

Where disclosure is required by a W3C Member, the AC Representative makes the disclosure.

Anyone else may also make a disclosure.

Known Disclosures

Disclosures for Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0

The entry in the first column links to details about the disclosed patent, including any excluded claims or additional licensing information that has been provided.

Patent for Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0Excluded claims?Notes on exclusions
Issued patent '6,701,366' (U.S. patent) held by Nortel Networks all 30 claims

Nortel Inc. has excluded claims from U.S. patent no. 6,701,366 from the W3C RF licensing commitment. Nortel Inc. does not believe there are essential claims as defined in the W3C Patent Policy, but they do not guarantee the absence of essential claims. If there are essential claims, Nortel Inc indicated in their first disclosure statement that they are willing to license U.S.Patent no. 6,701,366 on RAND terms.

The Voice PAG on CCXML recommends:

  1. that the Voice Browser Working Group proceed with the further advancement of CCXML on the way to Recommendation status
  2. that the Voice Browser Working Group remain observant about eventual assertion of US Patent no. 6,701,366 against implementers of CCXML and will report those back to the Working Group and to the Ubiquitous Web Domain Lead

See the full PAG Report for more information.

How to Make a Patent Disclosure

W3C Members and Invited Experts (including those not participating in this group) wishing to disclose a patent for any specification produced by the Voice Browser Working Group should use the Voice Browser Working Group patent disclosure form.

Disclosures from the general public should be sent to the Staff Contacts of this group.

For specifications developed under the W3C Patent Policy, parties that commit to the W3C Royalty-Free Licensing Terms are not required to disclose patents. Any party (not just the Working Group Participants) may commit to the W3C Royalty-Free Licensing Terms and may do so by following the instructions in the next section.

Claim Exclusions

Only Voice Browser Working Group participants may exclude patent claims concerning specifications developed under the W3C Patent Policy, per section 4 of the W3C Patent Policy. To make an exclusion, participants should use the Voice Browser Working Group patent claim exclusion form, but only after first disclosing the patent.

Exclusion Opportunities

The Patent Policy FAQ provides detailed information about exclusion opportunities, that is, when a Working Group Participant can exclude a patent claim.

Each exclusion opportunity has a duration. See section 4.1 of the W3C Patent Policy and section 2 of the Patent Policy Transition Procedure for information on how the exclusion deadline is calculated.

At each exclusion opportunity, Participants may exclude patent claims with respect to a body of text. The Reference Draft is the reference body of text for the current exclusion opportunity.

Note: At each new exclusion opportunity (e.g., in the case of a second Last Call), exclusions are only with respect to differences since the previous reference body of text. These differences may be less than an entire document, and the summary below does not (yet) address that granularity. Also, in some edge cases (discussed in the FAQ), Participants, depending on when they joined the Working Group, will have different Reference Drafts; the summary below does not reflect this case.

History of Exclusion Opportunities

CSS3 Speech Module
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 20 January 2005; opportunity ended on 18 April 2005
Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 20 January 2005; opportunity ended on 18 April 2005
  2. Call for exclusion sent on 06 November 2006; opportunity ended on 05 January 2007
Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 2.1
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 20 January 2005; opportunity ended on 18 April 2005
  2. Call for exclusion sent on 22 September 2006; opportunity ended on 22 November 2006
Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 20 January 2005; opportunity ended on 18 April 2005
  2. Call for exclusion sent on 30 June 2005; opportunity ended on 28 August 2005
  3. Call for exclusion sent on 19 January 2007; opportunity ended on 20 March 2007
Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 16 May 2005; opportunity ended on 14 July 2005
  2. Call for exclusion sent on 31 January 2006; opportunity ended on 01 April 2006
  3. Call for exclusion sent on 06 November 2006; opportunity ended on 05 January 2007
State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction 1.0
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 06 October 2005; opportunity ended on 02 December 2005
Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 11 January 2007; opportunity ended on 09 June 2007

Additional Licensing Information

As described in section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy:

All Working Group participants are encouraged to provide a contact from which licensing information can be obtained and other relevant licensing information. Any such information will be made publicly available along with the patent disclosures for the Working Group in question.

Patent holders may:

  1. Provide additional licensing information for documents produced by this Working Group
  2. Provide the same additional licensing information for all documents with associated licensing obligations produced by this Working Group, or
  3. Provide additional licensing information for any W3C document with associated licensing obligations produced by any W3C Working Group under the W3C Patent Policy.

Please recall that, per section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy, a W3C Royalty-Free license:

may not impose any further conditions or restrictions on the use of any technology, intellectual property rights, or other restrictions on behavior of the licensee, but may include reasonable, customary terms relating to operation or maintenance of the license relationship such as the following: choice of law and dispute resolution.

Any additional licensing information that has been provided is listed below. The section below will be empty when no additional licensing information has been provided.

Additional licensing information for Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0

The following entities have provided licensing information for this specificiation :

Note: All actions carried out through this system are reported by email to the relevant parties; copies are sent to w3c-archive@w3.org (Member-readable archive).


Developed and maintained by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (dom@w3.org).
$Id: status.php,v 1.258 2007/12/12 08:04:54 dom Exp $
Please send bug reports and request for enhancements to dom@w3.org