Bonum Certa Men Certa

India Says No to RAND and Europe Should Pay Attention

Elephant statue



Summary: India does the right thing when it comes to RAND and the world ought to pay attention and mimic this Indian model regarding standards

THERE is some good news regarding software patents in India and also an admission from Microsoft that patents inside standards are not a good idea after all. We'll go through some of the news links we found and explain what they mean.



Glyn Moody, one of the more notable voices as of late against RAND terms ('GPL kryponite'), says that "Microsoft Demonstrates why FRAND Licensing is a Sham" in this new post regarding the Microsoft versus Motorola lawsuit (where Microsoft is a patent aggressor). As Dr. Moody puts it:

The key part here is that Microsoft accuses Mototola of failing to honour its commitment “to license identified patents related to wireless and video coding technologies under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions.” That is, even when FRAND (called RAND here) has been agreed as the terms under which technology will be licensed, there is no guarantee those terms will actually be “reasonable” (or “fair”) in everyone's eyes.

This is exactly what I was suggesting in my previous piece - but even worse here, because this isn't even about the non-availability of “special” terms for free software, but the squabbling amongst traditional proprietary vendors over what FRAND means in practice. Basically, it demonstrates nicely that FRAND means precisely and exactly nothing: grand-sounding though “fair” and “reasonable” may be, in the red-in-tooth-and-claw world of patent licensing, they are hollow words that offer absolutely zero guarantee for those that foolishly take them at face value.

Indeed, Microsoft's action shows that the only way to obtain “fair and reasonable” terms under FRAND is fight for it in the courts - which again is completely impossible for free software projects that are not bankrolled by major companies. This is yet another way in which FRAND is biased against such smaller, players that make up most of the free software world.

Microsoft's latest action provides one more compelling reason why the European Commission should not use FRAND for EIF v2 if it wants to create a level playing field for software in Europe through support for open standards. If it does, the only people who will benefit will be the big, bullying software companies that will simply ride roughshod over any sense of “fairness” or “reasonableness” - and the lawyers.


Simon Phipps too has just written about RAND the following remarks (the context being a little different from the above):

One of the unseen menaces to software freedom is bilateral (private) agreements that supersede apparent freedoms. That’s a great reason to oppose RAND as a way of licensing patents in standards by the way – RAND ensures the market is not transparent and open becuase it compels participants to engage in bilateral agreements that supersede software freedom.


Fortunately, at least in India, sanity prevails and will hopefully expand to the West. RAND-type terms are being abolished as matter of law (although it's a bit of a stretch to say so). As Pranesh Prakash put it:

Very exciting! India's new Open Standards policy's finalized: http://goo.gl/4YfeD [pdf] #openstds


Here is how a Red Hat employee from India put it

After three years of continuous running battles, India's Department of Information Technology has finalized the National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance. This incorporates many of the key points submitted by Red Hat. Over the last three years, we worked with our friends in government, academic, civil society and the media to push the Indian government in favor of a policy that mandates a single, royalty-free standard. The final policy and the comments that Red Hat had submitted are attached.


Michael Tiemann, OSI superstar and colleague of the person above, writes not on behalf of Red Hat that:

This clause ensures that open standards do not discriminate against open source, which is great news for the free software and open source software communities. More importantly, as India's star continues to rise, this shows that a leading nation of the world can discuss, debate, and decide a policy that balances—and indeed strengthens—the interests of business and the rights of the people. The wisdom and courage of India are on full display today!


This will not stand without a fight from those who oppose software freedom or monetise unnecessary litigation. Our reader Satipera warns of "Pushing #swpats [software patents] in India" under this new article from a bias-filled source, obviously a person with vested interests. Dr Anu Vaidyanathan, who describes himself as "founder of PatNMarks, an intellectual property consulting firm," has just been given a platform by The Hindu, as if it's intended to provide/facilitate advertising/lobbying needs. To quote parts of this 'plug':

Patent law in India states explicitly that a mathematical or business method or computer program per se or algorithms constitute non-patentable subject matter. In the USPTO, various tests exist to check whether a certain patent is a business method or a software patent. These are applied after the tests for novelty and inventiveness, which are the first-level tests to be applied to any patent, worldwide.

In India, arguably, the precedents that exist for the successive application of these tests are very slim simply because we don't have a vast litigation history in this area — either in Business Methods or in Software. For future reference and purposes of discussion, these are important for two reasons (a) Litigation surrounding technology companies within India, most notably Google, is on the rise in the domain of Intellectual Property and (b) Indian companies are better off knowing the possibility of their patents being accepted based on historical data than to be first filers that set them up in a big way for litigation and other unexpected precedents.

[...]

For a software company, this is probably the best way forward because by applying for a patent, these companies are not trying to limit access to their technology, rather making the case of protecting their fort to avoid the nuisance of trolls or third-party objections to their code-bases, application programming interfaces or platforms.


These are the sorts of people who would rather see standards being 'contaminated' with software patents, in which case Free software gets excluded. Citizens of India should not let the RAND proponents get their way; it would harm all small- and medium-sized businesses, be they proprietary or free/libre. The EU will hopefully be inspired by India now that the debate there is ongoing (with Microsoft front groups pushing for RAND this fall [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]); "let's hope the EU gets it while it's hot," argues Glyn Moody.

As you may have noticed, I've been writing quite a lot recently about the imminent European Interoperability Framework (EIF), and the extent to which it supports true open standards that can be implemented by all. Of course, that's not just a European question: many governments around the world are grappling with exactly the same issue. Here's a fascinating result from India that has important lessons for the European Commission as they finalise EIF v2.

As you might expect, the free software community in India has been fighting similar battles to those still raging in Europe.


The FFII has meanwhile found out that the US ACTA negotiator said: "I personally don’t think there are any problems with the patent system." Yes, it figures. That's where a lot of the RAND trouble comes from.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October