Sun’s Patent Licensing Controversy

The XML dev mailing list has been discussing the licensing terms for the patent Since Elliote Rusty Harold made a recommendation of the rejection of the specification. Danielle Veillard, the chair of Xpointer meetings, mentioned that it would be fruitless to chase them all since no progress would be made. However he was sympathetic to the patent itself.An analysis of the situation was made by Tim Bray. He described it as a big problem and made a suggestion that it would be more responsible for the sun to make a declaration that the patent had no standing in comparison to the pointer. He also pointed out that sun should permit anyone to implement and use it without any obligations being incurred of any kind. Licenses could be issued by the sun on account of the patent.A citation of unisys  and the US Army Missile Command was made by Len Bullard. He noted that sun lawyers might experience a big problem which was the US Army.Another editor of the Xpointer spec known by the name Eve Mailer who works for sun noted that the situation has been In existence long before she was a co-chair.Finally another suggestion was made by Ben Trafford that their patent was not supportable as microsoft’s  patent on the concept of stylesheet. He encouraged Links members to use links to send mails via EVE’s link to the sun’s legal department and made a conclusion that the sun could sue him if they didn’t get the message together with other folks.