Licensing IP embodied in standards

How should a standardization body such as the IEEE deal with patents and copyrights on technology essential to using a standard? A recent controversy within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, ) over a Microsoft patent illustrates the kind of problem that can arise when intellectual property rights cloud users' right of access to a standard. As yet, the IEEE has not developed a coherent policy on this issue; nor, apparently, has any other major standardization body. Beginning in 1995, W3C sponsored meetings, as suggested in 1994 by Nor-wegian Web guru Hakon Lie, looking toward improving HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) by incorporating cascading style sheets into it. Cascading style sheets govern the format for a set of any number of Web pages with different URLs. Use of such style sheets permits a programmer to modify the format of a number of related Web pages at once simply by changing the content of the style sheet. The programmer thus need not go into the code of each individual page and change it to the new format. Moreover, use of style sheets decreases the amount of code that must be written for each page in the first place. The style sheet can specify the format , for example, of all headings within the page (say, 14-point Times Roman, italic) or all background colors or wallpaper, making it unnecessary to repeat the same codes each time. In addition, using style sheets decreases the amount of code that must be transmitted to end users, and style sheets can be cached, both of which lessen users' downloading time. (For more information, see .) The 1995 participants in the standard-setting process included representatives of Microsoft, one of whom was its standards spokesman, Thomas Reardon. Apparently unknown to Microsoft's W3C representatives (so they claim), others at Microsoft were at the same time applying for and prosecuting a patent application that became US Patent No. 5,860,073 (the '073 patent). The face of the '073 patent, however, twice refers to the Hakon Lie proposals for cascading style sheets. It cites four w3.org Web pages referring to such style sheets, which may indicate some awareness at Microsoft of the W3C style sheet standardization project. The '073 patent issued in January 1999 under the name, " Style sheets for publishing system. " The 35 claims of the patent are directed to " the use of style sheets in an …