This Special Interest Group first met in April 2006 in the offices of Deloitte and Touche, London at which it considered the submission that OFE had made on European Patent Policy

At the 2^nd meeting on 15^th June 2006, the role of the SIG was agreed in the context of an agreed overall vision of an open, competitive European IT Market which would facilitate open, competitive choice for the IT user. 

ROLE AND RANGE

The role of the SIG was agreed as follows:

    Aims

1) To explore and understand key regulatory, legal and commercial issues for the stakeholders involved in the development and protection of open, competitive choice for the IT user.

2) Where possible, reach common agreement.

3) Promote solutions designed to achieve overall aims.

    Collaborations

Seek across the spectrum collaborations with OSS community, user and supplier stakeholders.

    Measures of Success

Achievement of governmental, regulatory and legal agreement to positions which protect open, competitive choice for the IT user.

The following working definitions were agreed:

1.      Openness

Initial definition:

1.      Conformance to international and industry standards;

2.      Open products designed and proved to interwork seamlessly with other standards conforming products;

3.      Users have a practical option of replacing one component with another to do the same job – the principle of ‘Substitutability’.

2.      Lock-in

Initial short definition:

1.      Limitation of choice;

2.      Users lose their ability to choose freely their next IT solution;

3.      Exit cost is as important a factor in TCA as initial purchase price;

4.      Ask oneself the cost of migrating from first to second choice.

          Initial longer definition

Lock-in" refers to any of various methods that a supplier may use to tie its customers to continued purchases of its products or related products. In the information technology sector,        suppliers can create lock-in whose hardware or software products use proprietary standards for interoperability and data/document interchange, rather than open standards. This may mean that a customer who has purchased such hardware or software will find it difficult and expensive to change suppliers at a future date, and may therefore continue contracting with the original supplier -- even though suppliers who use open standards may offer superior or less expensive solutions. Although use of proprietary standards is a common business practice that is usually legal, proprietary standards can be inefficient and discourage innovation, and can raise concerns under competition/antitrust law, particularly where a supplier with market power uses proprietary standards as a tool to lock in its customers.

3.      Interoperability

The European Interoperability Framework (EIF v.1.0) definition:

“The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its in going development occurs in the basis of an open decision making procedure available to all parties (consensus or majority decision);

The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available wither freely or at a nominal charge.  It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or a nominal fee.

The intellectual property – i.e. Patents possibly present – (of parts) of the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.

The are no constraints on the re0use of that standard,

It was agreed that the OFE LCR SIG should play an active role in the definition of EIF 2.0 and other relevant standards.

PATENTS

It was agreed that OFE should present a generally agreed position on the development of a new patent regime in the European Community, highlighting the need to avoid injunctive action.  OFE should promote the creation of a regulatory framework which would force patent holders to prior disclose their patents to the standard bodies, whether or not the patent holders were party to the standards definition process.  OFE should argue for higher quality patents.

European Patent Pool

The possibility of establishing a European Patent Pool was considered but it was decided           that such a pool might raise more problems that it solved.

OPEN DRM

It was agreed to submit a paper on Open DRM to the next SIG meeting.

COPYRIGHT

OFE should adopt a pragmatic approach identifying the laws, regulations that would do most damage to open competition and open standards.  Many of the problems arise out of the music industries need to protect its investment.  This carried across into any form of record with negative effects of software engineering.

MS VISTA

Agreed to assess potential impact of Vista on Interoperability and Open Source and pool our knowledge, wherever possible, before its release.  

GOVERNMENT PROGRAMME

Agreed to examine the theory and practice of UK and EC governmental procurement regulations and their actual practice which almost invariably has favoured de facto standards and established suppliers.  Produce a summary of existing government procurement regulations and practices which explicitly favour an individual supplier rather than specify a quality standard, to be able to use whenever examples are needed to portray potential situations of vendor lock-in and possibly uncompetitive practices.