Web Real-Time Communications Working Group - IPR

Licensing Commitments

Participants in this group have made certain licensing commitments by joining the group. In addition to these Participants, non-participating W3C Member may have made licensing commitments.

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 Join form for licensing commitments from non-participating Members.

Other parties making a substantive contribution to the work of the group need to make a Royalty-Free patent commitment, as described in section 6.2.6 of the Process. Team contacts will provide instructions for recording the non-participant licensing commitment before the contribution can be accepted.

Participation

W3C Member Organizations
  • Agora.io
  • Apple Inc.
  • Baidu, Inc.
  • ByteDance
  • CANTON CONSULTING
  • China Mobile Communications Corporation
  • Cisco
  • Daily, Co
  • DappWorks Technology Inc.
  • Datadog
  • Discord
  • ERICSSON
  • Google LLC
  • Gooroomee Inc.
  • Igalia
  • Intel Corporation
  • Jiangsu TPBlock Technology Co., Ltd. (江苏第三极区块链科技有限公司)
  • Meta
  • Microsoft Corporation
  • Monotype
  • Mozilla Foundation
  • NVIDIA
  • The New York Times
  • |pipe|

Note: Log in to see links to organizations if you have member access

Invited Experts
  • Lennart Grahl
Team members
  • Carine Bournez
  • Dominique Hazaël-Massieux

See also the list of individuals participating in this group.

The Call for Participation for this group was announced on 2024-08-07; see the Patent Policy FAQ for information about continued participation before re-joining the group.

Specifications published by the Group

The following is the list of specifications produced by the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group that have associated disclosures obligations, and possible licensing obligations under the W3C Patent Policy.

Documents under the W3C Patent Policy

Document Patent Disclosure Patent Exclusion
WebRTC: Real-Time Communication in Browsers disclose exclude
Media Capture and Streams disclose exclude
MediaStream Recording disclose exclude
MediaStream Image Capture disclose exclude
Media Capture Depth Stream Extensions disclose exclude
Identifiers for WebRTC's Statistics API disclose exclude
Audio Output Devices API disclose exclude
Screen Capture disclose exclude
Media Capture from DOM Elements disclose exclude
MediaStreamTrack Content Hints disclose exclude
WebRTC Priority Control API disclose exclude
Identity for WebRTC 1.0 disclose exclude
Scalable Video Coding (SVC) Extension for WebRTC disclose exclude
WebRTC Encoded Transform disclose exclude
MediaStreamTrack Insertable Media Processing using Streams disclose exclude
Region Capture disclose exclude
Capture Handle - Bootstrapping Collaboration when Screensharing disclose exclude
Viewport Capture disclose exclude

Documents not/no longer under the W3C Patent Policy

Document Patent Disclosure Patent Exclusion
MediaStream Capture Scenarios disclose Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)
WebRTC Extended Use Cases disclose Exclusion is not possible (document not under PP)

Patent Disclosures and Claim Exclusions

This section summarizes patent disclosures by participants in W3C's Web Real-Time Communications Working Group as required by section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

W3C takes no position regarding either:

  • 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
  • the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available from those not participating in this group.

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 Web Real-Time Communications Working Group should use the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group patent disclosure form.

Disclosures from the general public should be sent to the W3C Staff.

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 Web Real-Time Communications 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 Web Real-Time Communications 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 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 Exclusion 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 Candidate Recommendation Snapshot), 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 address that granularity. Also, in some edge cases (discussed in the FAQ), Participants, depending on when they joined the Working Group, will have different Exclusion Drafts; the summary below does not reflect this case.

Exclusion Opportunities

WebRTC: Real-Time Communication in Browsers
Call for exclusion started on 2024-10-08, opportunity until 2024-12-07

Previous exclusion opportunitiesView previous exclusion opportunities

Viewport Capture
Call for exclusion started on 2022-05-24, opportunity until 2022-10-21
Capture Handle - Bootstrapping Collaboration when Screensharing
Call for exclusion started on 2022-05-10, opportunity until 2022-10-07
Region Capture
Call for exclusion started on 2022-04-05, opportunity until 2022-09-02
MediaStreamTrack Insertable Media Processing using Streams
Call for exclusion started on 2022-02-10, opportunity until 2022-07-10
WebRTC Encoded Transform
Call for exclusion started on 2021-09-21, opportunity until 2022-02-18
Media Capture and Streams
Call for exclusion started on 2021-10-13, opportunity until 2021-12-12
WebRTC Priority Control API
Call for exclusion started on 2021-03-18, opportunity until 2021-05-17
WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers
Call for exclusion started on 2020-08-25, opportunity until 2020-10-24
Scalable Video Coding (SVC) Extension for WebRTC
Call for exclusion started on 2019-10-22, opportunity until 2020-03-20
Identifiers for WebRTC's Statistics API
Call for exclusion started on 2020-01-14, opportunity until 2020-03-14
WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers
Call for exclusion started on 2019-12-13, opportunity until 2020-02-11
Media Capture and Streams
Call for exclusion started on 2019-07-02, opportunity until 2019-08-31
MediaStreamTrack Content Hints
Call for exclusion started on 2018-07-03, opportunity until 2018-11-30
WebRTC DSCP Control API
Call for exclusion started on 2018-07-03, opportunity until 2018-11-30
Identity for WebRTC 1.0
Call for exclusion started on 2018-09-27, opportunity until 2018-11-26
WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers
Call for exclusion started on 2018-09-27, opportunity until 2018-11-26
Identifiers for WebRTC's Statistics API
Call for exclusion started on 2018-07-03, opportunity until 2018-09-01
WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers
Call for exclusion started on 2018-06-21, opportunity until 2018-08-20
WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers
Call for exclusion started on 2017-11-02, opportunity until 2018-01-01
Media Capture and Streams
Call for exclusion started on 2017-10-03, opportunity until 2017-12-02
Audio Output Devices API
Call for exclusion started on 2017-10-03, opportunity until 2017-12-02
Media Capture and Streams
Call for exclusion started on 2016-05-19, opportunity until 2016-07-18
Media Capture from DOM Elements
Call for exclusion started on 2015-02-19, opportunity until 2015-07-19
Screen Capture
Call for exclusion started on 2015-02-10, opportunity until 2015-07-10
Audio Output Devices API
Call for exclusion started on 2015-02-10, opportunity until 2015-07-10
Media Capture and Streams
Call for exclusion started on 2015-04-14, opportunity until 2015-06-13
Identifiers for WebRTC's Statistics API
Call for exclusion started on 2014-10-23, opportunity until 2015-03-22
Media Capture Depth Stream Extensions
Call for exclusion started on 2014-10-08, opportunity until 2015-03-06
Mediastream Image Capture
Call for exclusion started on 2013-07-09, opportunity until 2013-12-06
MediaStream Recording
Call for exclusion started on 2013-02-06, opportunity until 2013-07-06
Media Capture and Streams
Call for exclusion started on 2012-07-02, opportunity until 2012-11-29
WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers
Call for exclusion started on 2011-10-27, opportunity until 2012-03-25

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.

Such licensing information should be sent to the W3C Staff.

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.