Editing OASIS (organization) (section)

== Patent disclosure controversy ==
Like many bodies producing [[open standards]] e.g. [[Ecma International|ECMA]],<ref name="randEcma">{{cite web|url=http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/codeofconduct.htm|title=Ecma Code of Conduct in Patent Matters|date=1 December 2009|access-date=10 August 2015}}</ref> OASIS added a [[Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing]] (RAND) clause to its policy in February 2005.<ref name="controversy1" /> That amendment required participants to [[Invention disclosure|disclose]] intent to apply for [[software patent]]s for technologies under consideration in the standard. Contrary to the [[W3C]], which requires participants to offer [[royalty-free]] [[license]]s to anyone using the resulting standard, OASIS offers a similar Royalty Free on Limited Terms mode, along with a Royalty Free on RAND Terms mode and a RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) mode for its committees. Compared to W3C, OASIS is less restrictive regarding obligation to companies to grant a royalty-free license to the patents they own.<ref name="policy">{{cite web|title=Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy |url=https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/ipr|work=OASIS |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240208032621/https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/ipr/ |archive-date= Feb 8, 2024 }}</ref>

Controversy has rapidly arisen<ref name="controversy2">{{cite web|last=Sheriff|first=Lucy|title=OASIS open standards not open enough· The Register |website=[[The Register]] |url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/23/oasis_patent_policy/ |date=February 23, 2005}}</ref> because this licensing was added silently and allows publication of standards which could require licensing fee payments to patent holders. This situation could effectively eliminate the possibility of [[free software|free]]/[[open source software|open source]] implementations of these standards. Further, contributors could initially offer royalty-free use of their patent, later imposing per-unit fees, after the standard has been accepted.

On April 11, 2005, ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported [[IBM]] committed, for free, all of its patents to the OASIS group.<ref name="ibmFreePatent">{{cite web|url=https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipr-wg/current/msg02982.html|title=No RAND in OASIS|date=5 April 2005|access-date=10 August 2015}}</ref> Larry Rosen, a software law expert and the leader of the reaction which rose up when OASIS quietly included a RAND clause in its policy, welcomed the initiative and supposed OASIS will not continue using that policy as other companies involved would follow. The RAND policy has still not been removed and other commercial companies have not published such a free statement towards OASIS.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS from 2001 to 2008,<ref name="patrickGannon">{{cite web|url=https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/46059/Gannon-Bio-201205.pdf|title=Bio –Patrick J. Gannon|date=1 May 2012|access-date=10 August 2015}}</ref> minimized the risk that a company could take advantage of a standard to request royalties when it has been established, saying "If it's an option nobody uses, then what's the harm?"{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}.

Sam Hiser, former marketing lead of the now defunct [[OpenOffice.org]], explained that such patents towards an open standard are counterproductive and inappropriate. He also argued that [[IBM]] and [[Microsoft]] were shifting their standardization efforts from the [[W3C]] to OASIS, in a way to leverage probably their patents portfolio in the future. Hiser also attributed this RAND change to the OASIS policy to Microsoft.<ref name="controversy3">{{cite web|last=Lyman|first=Jay|title=Linux.com :: OASIS: Meaningful open standards or mirage?|url=http://archive09.linux.com/articles/45151|date=May 24, 2005|access-date=June 27, 2013|archive-date=March 20, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150320084808/http://archive09.linux.com/articles/45151|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The RAND term could indeed allow any company involved to leverage their patent in the future, but that amendment was probably added in a way to attract more companies to the consortium, and encourage contributions from potential participants.{{Opinion|date=July 2024}} Big actors like Microsoft could have indeed applied pressure and made a sine-qua-non condition to access the consortium, and possibly jeopardize/boycott the standard if such a clause was not present.