Licenses and Patents relating to Accessible Contrast Methods

[Myndex]

Important

A body of unfounded rumors have been circulating that have no basis in fact regarding patents and the temporary restrictive license.

To be clear, the APCA Readability Criterion is and always will be a free-to-use set of guidelines. The goal of Inclusive Reading Technologies, Inc., a non-profit, is to foster better readability without visual fatigue, and to encourage best practices in design to those ends, using science and evidence based methodologies.

It is intended that any IP protections that exist do so only insofar as to protect the integrity of the work. This should be clear by the early publication of the patent app, intended as a searchable defensive publication.

I have repeated this publicly and frequently, yet the obstructors are keen to ignore this fact.

The reason filing the patent became necessary is that obstructors were creating fake or invalid versions of APCA, seemingly to create a false narrative. In other cases, there were bad actors with demonstrated attempts at plagiarism or interference. This gave rise to a very real concern of "patent trolls" whom might attempt to file a preemptive patent in order to block usage, or attempt to unjustly demand royalties for something that was, and is, intended to be a free-to-use standard and guideline.

In addition, following the FPWD, the AGWG leadership was alarmed at the sudden and rapid adoption of the methods, which are a public beta for evaluation only. Thus in response to their concerns we created an interim restrictive license, to temporarily throttle wide adoption. The license will change appropriately once implemented and released.

To add, there are a few features that are not in the current public beta, in particular the protan compensator extension, that should be in any release. Therefore I would hope to see versions without the protan compensator removed from use. The restrictive license for the beta is a tool towards those ends.

I hope this clarifies the issue, and thank you for reading.

Andrew Somers
Director of Research
Inclusive Reading Technologies, Inc.

[iadawn]

Dear @Myndex,

Thank you for the above points. Please be reminded this repository/GitHub is intended to be a place for "further collaboration, support, and brainstorming" on specific projects. This is not the proper forum for discussion of the points you are raising. We ask to limit posts to issues and topics relevant to progressing the work on W3C projects.

Thank you,
Kevin

[Myndex]

Hello Kevin,

The question of patents and license is being stated (wrongly) as a reason to block the adoption of APCA. Therefore, clarifying this issue is relevant. And this is why I placed it in discussions and not issues.

Thank you

[iadawn]

Hi Andrew, this would still be a question for different forum as this relates more directly to the Process; possibly in first instance as email to chairs. Also, you presented the discussion in absolute terms rather than as a question for discussion.

Hope that makes sense,

Kevin

[Myndex]

Yes, that is why I posted with the label "General" and not "Q&A". I may use the discussion areas differently in my repos, and I was not aware of such a rule here.