Patented technology is a major obstacle to development
of a mobile web,Tim Berners-Lee, founding father of
the world wide web, said yesterday.
Speaking at the Pinkerton lecture of the
Institution of Engineering and
Technology in London last night (20 September), Berners-Lee
said that the mobile web has been sealed inside a "walled garden"
for a long time.
"Although mobile and
XHTML now connects
to everything a lot of the technology is proprietary and therefore
difficult to integrate. Patents get in the way of everything and
block the view," he said.
Berners-Lee urged the mobile web community to take note of the
experience of the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3).
Supplier patents had made it difficult for the World Wide Web
Consortium, which has a strict open IP environment, to bring wider
functionality and capabilities to the web.
But, Berners-Lee said, supplier CEOs eventually realised that
although they might have 95% of a select market with their web
products, they stood to gain about 60% of a considerably larger
market if they opened up their patents to the W3C.
Patents turn technology into a gravy train for suppliers, said
Beners-Lee. They make a lot of money, but there is no connectivity,
he said.
Berners Lee said that integration of video is also difficult
owing to the patents on video codexes.