Voice Browser Patent Advisory Group Charter

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Patent Policy, section 7.4.2 (PAG Charter Requirements).


Table of Contents


1 Goals

The Voice Browser Patent Advisory Group (VB PAG) is a Patent Advisory Group as defined by the W3C Patent Policy (PP).

The mission of this Patent Advisory Group is to study issues and propose solutions related to the patent disclosures for the Voice Browser Call Control (CCXML) 1.0 Last Call Working Draft.

This PAG is triggered by condition in Section 7.1 (PAG Formation) of the PP, which states that a PAG is triggered in the event "a patent has been disclosed that may be essential, but is not available under W3C RF licensing requirements". Currently, this is the case for the following patent claim received by the Voice Browser Working Group:

The Voice Browser PAG has the scope to:

If necessary, this might involve a request for an analysis of the claims by a W3C patent counsel. Such a request would require sufficient funds for this purpose are made available via the Web Legal Support Fund. Legal analysis will only begin once there is sufficient commitment of additional funds to support the work.

2 Duration

The Voice Browser PAG is chartered for 120 days, starting from 1 January 2006. The charter was extended to 31 July 2006 by announcement to w3c-ac-members.

On 19 July 2006, W3M extended the PAG until 31 January 2007 ( see the announcement to w3c-ac-members.)

3 Confidentiality

The mailing list archives of the VB PAG are member-only.

4 Participation, meetings, and logistics

4.1 Participation

The PAG composition is described in Section 7.3 of the PP as follows:

Each W3C Member's AC Rep should advise the PAG Chair and the W3C Team contacts whether their organization will participate in the PAG, and if so, who will represent them. Those Members participating must indicate explicit agreement to this charter.

VB PAG participation (attending meetings, following the mailing list) is expected to consume half a day per week.

4.2 Communications

A Member-only archived mailing list <w3c-voice-pag@w3.org> will be used for announcements of meetings, discussions etc.

4.3 Group home page

The Patent Advisory Group has a home page (Member-only) that records the history of the group, provides access to the archives, meeting minutes, updated schedule of deliverables, membership list, and relevant documents and resources. The page will be maintained by the W3C Team contact in collaboration with the Chair.

4.4 Meetings

The PAG will primarily work via teleconferences.

A one hour PAG teleconference will be held every week.

Participation in meetings (distributed or face-to-face) is limited to the participants described in Section 7.3 of the CPP and to individuals invited at the discretion of the Chair to specific meetings.

4.5 W3C Team involvement

As described in Section 7.3 of the CPP, the team participants in the Voice Browser PAG will be:

  1. Team contacts for the Voice Browser WG: Max Froumentin and Kazuyuki Ishikawa
  2. Interaction Domain Leader: Philipp Hoschka.
  3. The PAG Chair will be Rigo Wenning, W3C Staff Counsel