Does a Recommendation that is entirely informative have any associated licensing obligations?
According to the W3C Patent Policy, informative material is not essential to implementing a Recommendation and is therefore not subject to the licensing requirements of the policy. This is the case whether that material is a single section of a document or an entire document (such as a primer or guide) that is part of a multi-document Recommendation. Section 8.2 of the Patent Policy states: The following are expressly excluded from and shall not be deemed to constitute Essential Claims:… 2. …claims which would be infringed only by … portions of an implementation that are not specified in the normative portions of the Recommendation. Section 8.3 goes on to say that, “For purposes of this definition, the normative portions of the Recommendation shall be deemed to include only architectural and interoperability requirements.” W3C’s QA Specification Guidelines, section C. provide guidance about identifying the normative and informative portions of a document.
