A Blog From Behind the Trenches

A couple of years ago, I reported on how Apple was using patents to block a W3C specification.

The end-result was that the patent didn't seem to be relevant to the specification at all, and one or both of them were even rejected by the patent office. That Apple would use invalid or irrelevant patents or patent applications to block or delay an open standard seems odd, but if you look at their general behavior during the whole thing, it is easy to conclude that the intent was indeed malicious.

And while I didn't report on this (I suppose I should have), Apple actually used two patent applications to prevent a W3C standard from proceeding in 2010. This patent claim, too, seemed to have been filed at the very last minute, much like the patent claim in 2009.

As I mentioned, the submissions in question were still only patent applications, and Apple were basically saying that the claim covers not only the patent applications as they were then, but also "any claims that issue in any continuations, divisionals, continuations-in-part, reissues or other counterparts" in future versions of the applications.

Not exactly helpful.

And guess what, Apple is at it again. Another year, another attempt by Apple to block open standards using patents.

This time they have four claims - three patents and one patent application - that threaten to block the W3C Touch Events Specification. They filed their patent claims a little over a month before the time limit expired (the claim was filed on November 11, and the time limit is December 26, 2011).

The odd thing is that Apple chose not to join the working group that handles touch events. If they had joined, they would have been forced to file the patent claims far sooner. So now we know why they didn't join. What we don't know is why Apple insists on waiting almost until the last minute before filing its patent claims.

I'm starting to see a pattern here:

• 2009: Apple discloses one at the last minute. Patent Advisory Group created. Patent was found not to be relevant.
• 2010: Apple discloses two patent applications at the last minute. PAG created. One patent found to not apply. The other deemed not relevant.
• 2011: Apple discloses three patents and one application at the last minute. PAG likely to be created. Unclear what the result will be.

What makes this matter even worse is that this doesn't just affect these specific standards. The Patent Advisory Groups could in fact slow down the development of other standards by pulling people from other projects in order to investigate these claims. The investigation can take several months, and will take time, resources and money to complete.

That's time, resources and money that could have been spent on improving various other work-in-progress standards.

There has been a lot of confusion around the W3C HTML5 Test Suite the last couple of days. It was widely reported that because IE9 seemed to pass most of the tests (many of which are made by Microsoft), it was the most HTML5 compliant browser (which is of course not true).

The HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results page has now been updated to clarify the situation:

The HTML5 Test Suite Results aims to help implementers write applications that support HTML5. In no way are these conformance tests to be construed as providing certification or branding of HTML5 implementations. The only claim that could be made is that a particular implementation is conformant to a particular version of the HTML5 Test Suite.

It is inappropriate to cite those results as other than work in progress and unstable.

In other words: The results of these tests do not reflect the general HTML5 compliance. They only show which browsers pass those specific tests available at that specific time.

The page also explains that the Test Suite is under development. At the moment, there is a relatively small number of tests, but this will grow over time.

If you have ever wanted a quick overview of different Opera products and their abilities, our documentation team has just made your wish come true:

Web specifications support in Opera products: an overview

This document is a high-level overview of supported web specifications in various Opera products. It also lists specific product versions and which version of Presto they are using.

At time of writing, the following Opera products are listed: Desktop 10.6x, Desktop 10.5x, Mobile 10.1 (S60, Maemo), Mobile 10 (general), Mini

If you read the report from the W3C Patent Advisory Group (PAG) regarding Apple's patent claim against the Widgets 1.0 specification, you will not only see the reasons why the PAG does not think the patent is relevant, but it also reveals some worrying things about the way Apple handled the whole thing.

Read more...

The news that the HTML5 specification will not specify a video codec is bad news for the open Web. What makes things worse is that a common, royalty-free codec was actually agreed on by all involved browser vendors, except one.

Apple.

Read more...

There's some potentially bad news from the open standards front.

Early last month, it became clear that Apple might be causing trouble for the W3C Widgets specification. They are unwilling to make patent 5,764,992 (W3C information), which covers automatic software upates, royalty-free if the Widgets Update specification is found to use anything covered by the patent. This basically means a lot of additional work for the Working Group at the W3C, and might slow down the process of finalizing the widgets specification.

So as a response to this situation the W3C has put together a Patent Advisory Group, meaning that several companies are forced to spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out if Apple's patent claim actually applies, and if it does, what to do about it.

With the recent rumours of Apple getting all lawsuit-happy over patents, what are they up to exactly?

For Opera's position on software patents, take a look at Opera's vision statement.