W3C Group Participation Home

RDF Data Access Working Group Patent Policy Status

Participation

W3C Member Organizations
  • Agfa-Gevaert N. V. (2 representatives)
  • Asemantics S.R.L. (2 representatives)
  • Bristol, University of (no representative)
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences (no representative)
  • Clark & Parsia LLC (1 representative)
  • Cleveland Clinic (1 representative)
  • Eindhoven University of Technology (1 representative)
  • Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (2 representatives)
  • FSTC (Financial Services Technology Consortium) (no representative)
  • Garlik (1 representative)
  • Hewlett Packard Company (2 representatives)
  • IBM Corporation (1 representative)
  • Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (1 representative)
  • International Webmasters Association / HTML Writers Guild (IWA-HWG) (no representative)
  • Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) (1 representative)
  • OpenLink Software Inc. (2 representatives)
  • Oracle Corporation (2 representatives)
  • Profium (1 representative)
  • Southampton, University of (no representative)
  • University of Aberdeen, Computing Science (1 representative)
  • University of Innsbruck (no representative)
  • University of Manchester (1 representative)
  • Vrije Universiteit (no representative)
Invited Experts
  • Lee Feigenbaum
Team members
  • Eric Prud'hommeaux

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 26 February 2004; 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 RDF Data Access Working Group that have associated disclosures obligations, and possibly licensing obligations under the W3C Patent Policy.

Specification Policy Disclose Exclude Add licensing information
RDF Data Access Use Cases and Requirements W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
SPARQL Query Language for RDF W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
SPARQL Query Results XML Format W3C Disclose No open exclusion opportunity Add licensing information
SPARQL Protocol for RDF 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 RDF Data Access 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

No patent disclosures have been made for any specifications of this group.

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 RDF Data Access Working Group should use the RDF Data Access 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 RDF Data Access 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 RDF Data Access 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

RDF Data Access Use Cases and Requirements
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 30 August 2004; opportunity ended on 30 October 2004
SPARQL Query Language for RDF
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 11 January 2005; opportunity ended on 11 March 2005
  2. Call for exclusion sent on 28 July 2005; opportunity ended on 26 September 2005
  3. Call for exclusion sent on 06 April 2006; opportunity ended on 01 June 2006
  4. Call for exclusion sent on 26 March 2007; opportunity ended on 25 May 2007
SPARQL Query Results XML Format
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 21 March 2005; opportunity ended on 20 May 2005
  2. Call for exclusion sent on 02 August 2005; opportunity ended on 30 September 2005
  3. Call for exclusion sent on 06 April 2006; opportunity ended on 01 June 2006
  4. Call for exclusion sent on 09 July 2007; opportunity ended on 07 September 2007
SPARQL Protocol for RDF
  1. Call for exclusion sent on 02 May 2005; opportunity ended on 30 June 2005
  2. Call for exclusion sent on 14 September 2005; opportunity ended on 13 November 2005
  3. Call for exclusion sent on 06 April 2006; opportunity ended on 01 June 2006

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.

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).


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