Dear all:
Yesterday, Hewlett Packard has been granted a patent on "Policy Enforcement":
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8498959.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8498959.pdf
As far as I can see, it heavily constrains the commercial exploitation of
research done in the Semantic Web / Semantic Web Services community from
2001-2009.
So if you worked on policies in the context of Semantic Web Services or
Semantic Business Process Management before November 2009, it may be worthwhile
to check whether the patent claims inventions that you can prove to have been
prior art at that time.
This may be particularly relevant for the organizers and contributors to the
various policy workshops co-located with ISWC/ESWC conferences.
I am not familiar with the legal process, but if you feel this patent claims
what was already publicly known / discussed at conferences back then, please
ask your employer or legal department to challenge the patent. It may otherwise
put the usage of SWS in business applications at risk.
Best wishes
Martin
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martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
e-mail: h...@ebusiness-unibw.org
phone: +49-(0)89-6004-4217
fax: +49-(0)89-6004-4620
www: http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype: mfhepp
twitter: mfhepp
