The aim of the intellectual rights policies of the W3C is twofold:
This document answers several Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about W3C work. See also:
Other questions about W3C policies should be directed to site-policy@w3.org .
The original author of the document. Many documents are created by the W3C and we consequently hold the copyright. Owners who allow their works to be published on the W3C site retain the copyright, but agree to the W3C license for the redistribution of those materials from our site.
Please see W3C Trademark and Servicemark License for information on the treatment of W3C trademarks. See W3C Logo and Icon Usage for policies on specific logos files.
The W3C is not a formally incorporated organization, instead it is a contractual entity arising from agreements between the host institutions and our members. A host will frequently act on behalf of the contractual parties, with MIT presently taking the lead — though Amaya has been filed for registration in Europe by INRIA for instance.
Generically, we suggest the following text for attribution: "$mark$ is a (common law | registered) trademark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, or Keio University on behalf of the World Wide Web Consortium."
The STATUS of a W3C document is very important. It details its purpose, how the document was created or received, whether we are allocating resources to an activity related to the document, whether we have editorial control over the document, and how it may be referenced by other activities or documents. We disapprove and will act upon the misrepresentation of our work with respect to authorship, endorsement, or status.
Of course. Links are merely references to other sites. You don't have to ask permission to link to this site — or any other website. See ("link myths" for more on this).
However, you should never do anything (including making a link) that misrepresents what is being linked to, or implies a relationship with the W3C that does not exist. For instance, you may not use misleading frames, URL tricks, or redirections that misrepresent W3C content as being published by anyone other than W3C. Note, this requirement to be clear in your representations is your obligation, the W3C does not sign waivers about who may link to us.
As documented, W3C documents can be redistributed or republished on the condition that you provide information so that others can easily find the original document, that you provide notice of the W3C's copyright, and that if the document has a "STATUS" section, you reproduce it.
Yes. Fortunately most programs include the source URL when printing a document. You should also inform the class of the document's copyright notice.
Yes, provided that you clearly represent the status of the document and that the canonical version of the document can only be found on the W3C site. You should feel free to reference this FAQ or our other legal notices to make this representation clear.
See the Mirroring and Caching Policy.
If you believe your usage falls within the exception of fair use (e.g., in the U.S. § 107 Title 17. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use) we ask that your citation or reference to the excerpted material include the document's title, editors/authors, publication date, URL and an indication of its maturity/status (e.g., Working Draft, Recommendation, Note, etc.).
You must include a link or URL to the original W3C document, its status and its copyright notice. Conveniently, by including the complete specification you include much of this information since it is an integral part of the W3C document. In addition to the document and its STATUS information, URI, and copyright notice, we ask that you provide the full text of our document copyright license. You may not alter the content of the document (though we do sometimes grant permission to reformat or translate) in any way, including the integration of errata.
No and no.
Yes, you may translate a W3C Technical Report provided that you comply with the all of the following requirements:
This disclosure should be made in a header and/or footer that wraps the translated W3C specification. No semantic changes should be made to any part of the W3C document including the STATUS, contributors, or appendices. If comments or annotations are absolutely necessary within the content of the specification, those annotations must be clearly represented as such. (example)
If you wish to translate a document other than a Technical Report you must ask for specific permission as these documents are likely to change often, send you request to the document author/editor and w3c-translators@w3.org .
No. What you can do, however, is have a translation authorized by W3C and the community. In 2005, W3C adopted a Policy for Authorized W3C Translations so that translations in languages other than English may be used for official purposes. Examples include: a standardization authority in a country that wishes to standardize on a W3C Recommendation, but requires the usage of a local language; or a local government plans to reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in their regulations, but requires a translation of the guidelines in the local language to do so.
[Replaced the original notice that said that no such mechanism exists on 20060223]
There are two types of annotations mechanisms: (1) those that do not require the copying and modification of the document being annotated (e.g., an external service stores annotations that identify their target via XPointer) and (2) those that are created by copying and modifying the document itself (e.g., the file is copied and modified and the annotations are included in-line but differentiated using CSS). Annotations of the first type are links to the W3C site, which is permitted as long as those links do not misrepresent the document, its status, and relation to the W3C.
Annotations of the second (including the reorganization and excerption of copyrighted material) are derivative works and are covered by a policy much like the translation policy. You may make a copy of a Technical Report and annotate it only if you comply with the following requirements:
[added 19990225; tweaked 20000808: clarified that annotations include the creation of derivative works that reorganize and excerpt materials in a way that exceeds the bounds of fair use; 20020328: removed the requirement that the creator of the derivative work must agree that the derivative can be published under the W3C document copyright notice was removed.]
The creation of a reformatted work is a derivative work, something we do not generically permit in our document copyright license. However (like translations) we do want our Technical Reports to be as widely available as possible, though we must ensure that readers of derivative works understand the status of the derived work, its relation to the W3C, and how to get the original.
We grant specific permission to reformat a document if the requester complies with the all of the following requirements:
[added 20000315]
Check the actual schema or DTDs for a specific license.
Otherwise, while schemas and DTDs are frequently part of our specifications and seemingly fall under the document copyright terms, you may use them under the W3C Software License. The software license requires that you include/retain the copyright attribution and that you indicate any modification that you make. In the case of DTDs and schema, you must indicate your change by changing the namespace and/or public identifier so to distinguish your altered version from the W3C version. We further appreciate a couple sentences regarding who made the modifications, when, and what changes were made — a common software documentation practice.
We expect to revisit this topic as meta-data schemas become an increasingly important part of W3C specifications and as the meta-data schema definition capabilities of XML and RDF advance.
[added 19990323; tweaked 20030102]
As documented, W3C software can be modified and redistributed provided that you comply with the terms of the Software, to summarize, you must provide any pre-existing notices or the short form of a copyright statement, the full text of the license in a location viewable to users of the work, notice of any changes to the work, and respect the trademarks of its originator. For resources distributed/obtained over the Internet, a link to the software license from the copyright declaration is considered to be a location available to users. In a few instances, software distributed by the W3C is provided by another entity under specific terms and conditions which must be followed. Please review any notices or disclosures that accompany the software itself. Documentation of the software is also under the software license, though actual specifications are not.
Yes and you can charge for it — given the above requirements are met.
Yes, we want people to experiment with and improve our software. It can even be used in commercial software. If you make changes for the better, we encourage you to contact its authors. You may not make changes and continue to call it by a trademarked term or misrepresent the origin, capabilities, or liabilities associated with its use. You may make valid assertions, such that it is based on Amaya code, or that it is compliant with a Recommended Specification of the W3C.
Software which is free from any claims beyond W3C terms and conditions are compatible with the GPL and may be redistributed under the GPL. The GPL ensures users always have the ability to run, change, or redistribute software with or without changes; it also prevents such software from being bundled with closed/proprietary software such that users lose their rights to that free code in the new product. The W3C is compatible with this license and can be redistributed while complying with both the W3C and GPL software license! Additionally, the W3C license permits W3C code to be used in other (non-copyleft) licenses or even proprietary software.
If you use a library (like libwww) and include it in the source code, or compile/link to it, you must also include the copyright license. However, if you merely provide a compile option you are not obligated to include our license. Any subsequent party that links or includes against the library is obligated to include the license. (If you include the option, you might do your users a favor by pointing to it yourself.) To restate our policy: it is the responsibility of the person who causes our software to be included in subsequent distributions (either in source, object, or executable code) to abide by our terms.
If you wish to contribute code via CVS to one of the W3C Open Source Software, please complete and return the patches form. Also, send an email to the project/CVS-repository owner and site-policy@w3.org with notice of your intention. Please, understand that you will be bound by the following terms when you contribute code:
[added 19990323]
Yes. Permission is not required as long as the screen shot is not used in any manner which implies W3C sponsorship or endorsement of your product, service, or Internet site. You may wish to let us know that you are using a screen shot (by sending us notice at site-policy@w3.org). We also request, but do not require, that you indicate the source of the screen shot by URI.
Taking screenshots must not be used to circumvent W3C's logo usage policy.
Added 18 January 2005
Last revised by Reagle $Date: 2007/09/17 13:06:14 $