Last week, before the Microsoft OpenID news blew up, I participated in one of Aldo Castañeda's "Story of Digital Identity" podcasts. The topic was on OpenID and Intellectual Property issues - but the topics we discussed apply to any grassroots standards body that is looking to be adopted on a very broad scale. My co-podcasters were Larry Rosen (well regarded attorney within the open source community), and Brett McDowell (executive director, Liberty Alliance).
We covered a number of topics, but focused a lot on how much and in what ways a grassroots community need to think about IP and how it should act to protect the openness of its work, especially with regards to patent. At the end there was also an interesting quick discussion about Trademark and Community Marks.
Now that Microsoft has announced interest in working with OpenID, I expect these IPR issues to become very important and I expect that we'll have a very satisfactory conclusion to the IPR policy formation that has been going on for a number of months now with the proto-members of the newly proposed "OpenID Foundation".
Link for the podcast: http://stodid.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=179043
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