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Created: September 20, 2003.
News: Cover StoriesPrevious News ItemNext News Item

Standards Organizations Express Concern About Royalty Fees for ISO Codes.

Contents Updated 2003-12-19.

Summary

W3C, the Unicode Technical Committee, INCITS (International Committee for Information Technology Standards), NISO (National Information Standards Organization), Health Level Seven (HL7), the Internet Architecture Board, and IPTC have recently published statements of concern about ISO's interpretation of law and policy on the collection of royalty payments for the use of ISO codes. The data elements in question involve several ISO standards that are often referenced in Internet infrastructure specifications and protocols, and code lists that are widely implemented in language-sensitive text processing software. The lists include ISO 639 'Codes for the representation of names of languages', ISO 3166 'Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions', and ISO 4217 'Codes for the representation of currencies and funds'. ISO has clarified that "generally, software developers or commercial resellers requesting permission to embed the data elements contained in an ISO Code in their products for resale will be asked to purchase the Code in electronic format and pay either an annual fee or a one-time fee and any applicable maintenance fees required." The letters from the several standards bodies appeal [to ISO and ANSI] for reversal of the ISO interpretation and policy.

Introduction

Suppose the U.S. Postal Service issued a public bulletin like this:

Persons using the U.S. postal system are urged to construct postal addresses according to guidelines published in various standards documents, available online. With respect to the names of U.S. states and territories, any full spelling may be used, or alternatively, the official two-letter codes provided by the USPS online may be used. Commercial software developers are hereby advised that the code list for states is authoritatively documented in Postal Code Standard XXXX, a copyrighted specification. Incorporation of these codes into commercial software requires payment of royalties in the form of an annual fee (or a one-time fee) and any applicable maintenance fees, according the license governing this intellectual property.

Many readers would wonder to themselves (or out loud): "Can this actually be legal? They want to start charging royalty payments for embedding the two-character state codes into computer applications, even though these codes have been in common use for years?" Members of the IT community are asking a similar question about the recent "clarification" of ISO's policy regarding royalty payments for the use of ISO codes for the names of languages, countries, and currencies. As documented below, communiqués from the W3C, the Unicode Technical Committee, INCITS (International Committee for Information Technology Standards), NISO, HL7, Internet Architecture Board, and IPTC have been published, expressing concern about ISO's interpretation of law and policy on the collection of payments for the use of these ISO codes.

Many of the Internet infrastructure standards normatively reference the ISO standards which present ISO codes, and have done so for over seventeen years. The SGML standard, predecessor to XML, specifies in section 10.2.2.3 (production 88 for public text language) that the public text language must be a name [viz., an SGML 'name' per production 55], entered with upper-case letters; the name should be the two-character language code from ISO 639 that defines the principal natural language used in the public text. The XML Recommendation refers to both ISO 639 language codes and ISO 3166 country codes. Since language-sensitive machine processing of text is critical to any multilingual or localized computer application, these ISO codes are now widely used in commercial software. Details on language codes from ISO and other organizarions are provided in "Language Identifiers in the Markup Context."

Background on ISO's First "Clarification" Concerning Royalties for the Use of ISO Codes

Summary of ISO's position on the payment of royalty fees for use of codes in commercial software products is provided in a July 9, 2003 communiqué from Rose Maginniss (ANSI, Director Electronic Sales & Marketing), as recorded in the INCITS archive (INCITS document reference 'in030912'). The document attempts to reduce "confusion regarding reproduction of these data elements [in ISO codes] for purposes of proper application by a company within its internal systems, versus a company including the data elements in a product intended for commercial sale." The topic specifically concerns the ISO codes "that are a partial exception to the standard ISO copyright policies": [1] ISO 3166 'Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions'; [2] ISO 639 'Codes for the representation of names of languages'; [3] ISO 4217 'Codes for the representation of currencies and funds'.

The ISO CPSG effort to "clarify ISO's policies", according to the text of this July 9, 2003 document:

ISO's Commercial Policy Steering Group studied the issues and made the following recommendations to clarify ISO's policies regarding these Codes:

  1. The reproduction of the full Code shall follow the normal ISO copyright rules. [explanation follows]
  2. No copyright fee shall be charged for the reproduction of the 2 digit codes of ISO 3166, 4217 and 639 lists in books, magazines, academic work and for internal use by companies, institutes and organizations. [explanation follows]
  3. Generally, software developers or commercial resellers requesting permission to embed the data elements contained in an ISO Code in their products for resale will be asked to purchase the Code in electronic format and pay either an annual fee or a one-time fee and any applicable maintenance fees required...

See the complete statement and analysis of this attempt to "clarify" in connection with ISO's Second Clarification.

Similar interpretation is given by ISO's Jacques-Olivier Chabot (Director, General Services and Marketing), as recorded in the archived "Correspondence Between Oracle and ISO Regarding the Charging of Royalties for Country and Language Codes," from Donald Deutsch (Oracle). With respect to the ISO 3166 Code Lists available for download on the ISO website Jacques-Olivier Chabot writes: "... if you load the list of country codes in a commercial product, thus giving an added value to your product, it is normal that ANSI asks you for the payment of a royalty fee."

The ISO 3166 Code Lists are available online from the ISO Store. "The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO at no charge for internal use and non-commercial purposes. The use of ISO 3166-1 in commercial products may be subject to a licence fee." [description 2003-09-20]

An ANSI news article "ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group Meets at ANSI" reports on a Fifth Meeting of the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG), held May 12-13, 2003, at the New York offices of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The ISO CPSG "discussed the ISO 3166 country codes, ISO 4217 currency codes, and ISO 639 language codes and proposed clarifications for their distribution. Noting the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases, the CPSG asked that the Secretary-General recommend a consideration of the publication of some ISO standards as such, and promoted studying related pricing, delivery, and maintenance issues..."

ISO Clarifies its Clarification

In response to letters of concern/protest from several standards organizations, ISO published a statement "reaffirming" the "free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language codes."

This message was welcomed by some as a sign of ISO "backing down" or "repenting." It was questioned by some who were unable to see how the reaffirmation of a non-fee policy could square with (e.g.,) ANSI's previous negotiations requiring a fee payment: ISO "reaffirms free-of-charge use" of codes already subject to usage fee by ANSI? ISO's declaration that "there is no proposal currently being considered by ISO to impose charges for use of these codes, including on the World Wide Web and in software applications" was broadly interpreted to mean that the publicly-documented recommendation of the CPSG (published by ANSI) to seek royalty/usage fees from "software developers or commercial resellers requesting permission to embed the data elements contained in an ISO Code in their products for resale" was provisionally tabled. Others found the ISO announcement less than helpful because the term use (of the codes) was used in the text in an apparently general way, not addressing the specific kinds of use discussed in the CPSG recommendation. Equivocation or blunder?

Yet others found the ISO press communiqué inadequate to a resolution because of the informal genre and tentative nature of the declaration. Mark Davis (Unicode President, IBM Corporation) wrote, for example:

On the related issue of ISO royalties, ISO has taken a very important step with the issuance of a press release.

That press release is not quite enough yet to settle the issue, because:

(a) The text used in the press release was not definitive ("is to continue", "there is no proposal currently being considered", "has no plans for doing so"). Such language reserves the ability to change at any time.

(b) this was a press release, and has no legal or policy standing within ISO; it could be reversed at any time. To completely settle the issue, it should at least appear in the appropriate ISO policies and procedures, or in the text of (revisions of) ISO 4217, ISO 3166, ISO 639, and ISO 15924. [See the IETF-Languages list archives, 2003-11-15, Subject: "ISO codes: stability and royalties (was: Ambiguity)"]

Background

The ISO CPSG effort to "clarify ISO's policies" as presented in the text of the July 9, 2003 document distinguished three apparently different use scenarios that variably represent either (a) "reproduction of these [ISO] data elements for purposes of proper application by a company within its internal systems, versus (b) a company including the data elements in a product intended for commercial sale":

  1. Case #1: "The reproduction of the full Code shall follow the normal ISO copyright rules. Explanation: If a party wishes to reproduce an ISO Code in its entirety for any reason, a license agreement is required and payment of appropriate royalties is customary."

  2. Case #2: "No copyright fee shall be charged for the reproduction of the 2 digit codes of ISO 3166, 4217 and 639 lists in books, magazines, academic work and for internal use by companies, institutes and organizations. [Where] internal use [refers to] a company inserting the ISO Codes in appropriate places in its internal systems for use as part of that individual company's business." For example: "(a) a hospital may require a patient to enter a county code and a language code when registering for admittance; (b) a company may program a drop-down menu on its website as part of a registration or ordering page for proper identification of its worldwide visitors; (c) a company or an individual may use a country codes as part of a mailing address; (d) a bank may use the currency codes in its system for identifying funds in various locations."

  3. Case #3: "Generally, software developers or commercial resellers requesting permission to embed the data elements contained in an ISO Code in their products for resale will be asked to purchase the Code in electronic format and pay either an annual fee or a one-time fee and any applicable maintenance fees required. Explanation: Companies who develop software products for resale to other parties are adding value to their products by including the data elements from an ISO Code in proper applications. The developing company's labor and other costs to include these functions into the software product are incorporated into the selling price along with all its other overall production costs for that product. Via the sale of the product the developing company is not only being compensated for its direct efforts to incorporate the ISO Codes in appropriate locations but it is also being compensated for the value the ISO Codes have added to its product. The ISO community should also be compensated for providing the intellectual property required to incorporate the value-added features into the product."

Analysis of the ISO CPSG Recommendation

If use in Case #1 envisions the wholesale reproduction of the ISO specification in a publication (royalty required) and if use in Case #2 envisions implementation in application code (no royalty required), then what particular uses are envisioned in Case #3 (royalty required) where the company "embeds the data elements" or "includes the data elements" or "includes these functions" or "incorporates the ISO codes"? These (fee/royalty bearing) usages are evidently those for which ANSI (at least) had/has already been requiring payment of license fees beyond the purchase of the ISO specification.

What is meant by "embeds the data elements," "includes the data elements," "includes these functions," and "incorporates the ISO codes" -- for which financial compensation to ISO is required? How are these uses different (or are they?) from the use involving "loading" a list into a software product? In a communiqué of Jacques-Olivier Chabot, [ISO] Director, General Services and Marketing to Don Deutsch (Oracle), ISO defended the normative practice of charging a fee for loading an ISO code list into commercial software: "The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO at no charge for internal use and non-commercial purposes. The use of ISO 3166-1 in commercial products may be subject to a licence fee. Consequently if you load the list of country codes in a commercial product, thus giving an added value to your product, it is normal that ANSI asks you for the payment of a royalty fee." One commentator suggested that "load" means providing a text list: [in ISO language] loads a list of ISO codes... has always, in the past, meant that if you provide a text list copied from ISO that users can access, there is a copyright issue..." [Rick Jelliffe; see also the followup] Are we to understand that "embed, include, and incorporate" are equivalent to "load" in the sense of an obligation from copyright? In what program and user-interface contexts is the display of a "text list" a matter of copyright, according to ISO?

List of questions raised by various groups in connection with the ISO announcement of September 30, 2003

  1. Are the National Bodies (e.g., ANSI) legally bound to follow the policies of ISO in regard to not requiring royalties for various kinds of use of the ISO codes?
  2. Does the ISO announcement of September 30, 2003 effectively obsolete (and revoke) the language of the July 9, 2002 memo on the ISO CPSG recommendation -- and in particular, does it obsolete and revoke the CPSG interpretation in Case #3 reproduced above?
  3. Does ISO require (or allow NB requirement of) a one-time fee of a user/publisher who "wishes to claim that its product incorporates the codes in conformity with the ISO standards -- which could be perceived by the market as an added value"? See also the (possible) implication of "because they would be conforming to the International Standard ISO 3166..." in connection with planned service package.
  4. Does ISO require (or allow NB requirement of) a fee for the use of the data elements in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code, which is not freely provided in public space? Various references are made to the use of the short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes, but the license-free use of the alpha-3 country code data elements [cited as 'A-3'] is unclear. For example: "ISO 3166 code lists - The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO at no charge for internal use and non-commercial purposes. The incorporation of the complete ISO 3166-1 standard document in commercial products may be subject to a charge."
  5. What use cases are meant to be covered by the qualifying clause "subject to this being consistent with ISO's copyright" in the sentence "However, ISO and its members do not charge for the use made of the codes contained in these standards, subject to this being consistent with ISO's copyright"?
  6. With respect to ISO's characterization of the several standards bodies' concern as "misunderstandings" ("...misunderstandings of its current practice and intentions"): in what ways are the published statements of concern by W3C, UTC, INCITS, NISO, HL7, IAB, IPTC, etc. "misunderstandings"?
  7. What is meant by "embed," "include," "incorporate," and "load" if these refer to royalty-bearing usages which would (otherwise, without payment) violate ISO copyright -- and in what contexts does text display not infringe copyright?

If/when clear answers to these questions are made available by ISO, they will be posted here. Clear answers from ISO on the (2003-09-30) clarifications to (2003 Pre-2003-09-30) clarifications: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Some Published Positions of Standards Organizations

W3C Letter to ISO President Regarding Fee Proposal for ISO Codes

On September 19, 2003 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published a news item under the title "W3C Letter Regarding Fee Proposal for ISO Codes." The communiqué references the text of a letter of September 18, 2003 from Tim Berners-Lee (W3C Director) and Steven R. Bratt (W3C Chief Operating Officer) to Dr. Oliver Smoot (President, International Organization for Standardization) "to express deep concerns regarding a Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) proposal to charge for the use of certain ISO codes."

The W3C public document is accessible from the mail archives of the 'www-international' list supporting the W3C Internationalization Activity. The document says that:

"The Hypertext Coordination Group (representing the W3C's HTML, CSS, MMI, DOM, I18N, and Voice Browser Activities), along with W3C Member organizations, told us they believe that a swift, firm response from W3C is needed. A poll of the W3C Advisory Board over the past 24 hours has also produced clear support for such action. The W3C Advisory Board further recommended that the full W3C Membership be alerted to the situation and of the possibility to respond to national ISO member organizations."

From the W3C Letter to Dr. Oliver Smoot:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wishes to express its deep concerns over a recent proposal by the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) to charge fees for the commercial use of ISO codes such as ISO 639 (language codes), ISO 3166 (country codes), and ISO 4127 (currency codes).

These and similar codes are widely used on the Web. In particular the language and country codes are of direct interest to W3C and the users of W3C Recommendations in the context of HTTP, HTML and XML and various other technologies. Language and country codes currently provide a single, standard way of identifying languages (and locales) throughout the Web. Multilingual Web sites and Web pages, as well as internationalization and localization features, would be particularly affected.

Any charges for the use of these standards are going to lead to fragmentation, delay in deployment, and in effect a lack of standardization. In particular, those users who depend upon multi-lingual or non-English language services will suffer.

In their considerations, the CPSG notes "the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases". Web technology today allows publication and reuse of data at a small fraction of the costs a few years ago. If it is the case that the costs of maintaining these databases is beyond ISO's capacity to cover, we would suggest that ISO open a discussion with the larger user community about how these services might be hosted in a manner that covers these costs.

Given that this policy would have profound impact not only on ISO, but also on industry and users of the Web at large, we urge ISO to further consider this policy and its broader implications and consequences, and to reassure the community as quickly as possible that there will be no charges for the use of these standards.

Comments from Martin J. Dürst, W3C Internationalization Activity Lead:

"'There has not been a detailed discussion of how they own that copyright for the codes themselves,' [he said] ... 'The copyrights may not apply to individual codes, but only to the whole collection of codes -- like a dictionary, where each word is not copyrighted, but the entire collection of words and definitions is copyrighted.' Duerst said the ISO's proposal is troubling because so many other standards groups have adopted the ISO codes. For example, he said, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has largely adopted the ISO's country codes... Regardless of the outcome of the ISO's proposal, W3C's Duerst said it highlights the importance of free and open standards. 'It's not so much a legal question as a question of standards policy,' he said. 'If you start asking for money for the usage, people will stop using the standard. Then...there will be chaos'..." [reported by Evan Hansen]

Public Position of the Unicode Technical Committee

The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) is the primary decision making body within the Unicode Consortium and is responsible for the development and maintenance of the Unicode Standard. A UTC document "Unicode Technical Committee Public Positions" records the "resolutions of the Unicode Technical Committee on external issues of particular public importance to the computing industry. The Officers of the Unicode Consortium have endorsed these positions as Unicode Consortium policies; the Consortium will pursue positive resolution of these issues, and urge other organizations to carefully examine these issues and to take appropriate actions."

A UTC Resolution [96-M4] of August 26, 2003 documents the UTC's disposition on "Fees for the commercial use of ISO codes" in the following language:

"With reference to the proposal by ISO CPSG to charge fees for the commercial use of ISO codes: ISO infrastructure standards such as ISO 3166 (country codes), ISO 4127 (currency codes), and ISO 639 (language codes) must be royalty-free. The negative consequences of charging royalties would be severe, including strong incentives for companies and other organizations to:

  • avoid future contributions to ISO standards development
  • avoid using or referencing ISO standards
  • develop and use alternative, royalty-free, standards.

Moreover, many of these ISO standards are themselves based on contributions from other sources or duplicate pre-existing data, and charging royalties for the use of this data may expose ISO itself to debates over intellectual property rights and financial liability. Even the discussion of this issue casts a cloud of uncertainty over future use of ISO standards in the IT environment."

Comment from Unicode's Mark Davis (Unicode President, IBM Corporation): "'Charging (usage fees) for these codes would have a big impact on almost every commercial software product, including operating systems,' said Mark Davis, president of software consortium Unicode, which is seeking to set standard character sets for disparate computing systems. 'They're used in Windows, Java, Unix and XML. They're very pervasive.' [...] Unicode's Davis said he believes the usage fee proposal will 'die a well-deserved death.' But he said it still poses a significant danger to the software industry. 'It has been raised seriously, otherwise we wouldn't have flagged it as an issue'." [reported by Evan Hansen]

Letter from the INCITS Executive Board to the ANSI ISO Council

INCITS (InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards) is "the primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), encompassing storage, processing, transfer, display, management, organization, and retrieval of information. As such, INCITS also serves as ANSI's Technical Advisory Group for ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1. JTC 1 is responsible for International standardization in the field of Information Technology."

The INCITS website home page [2003-09-24] carried a notice on "INCITS Contribution to ANSI Concerning the Availability of ISO Codes: as follows: "INCITS requests that ANSI adopt a position that fees for using the contents of standards, as opposed to fees for the purchase of the standards themselves, is inappropriate."

In an August 1, 2003 memo "INCITS Contribution to ANSI Concerning the Availability of ISO Codes," the INCITS Executive Board sent advice to the ANSI ISO Council expressing its concern about the availability of ISO Codes:

"INCITS wishes to express its concern over recent positions taken by ANSI and by the ISO CPSG with respect to ISO 3166, ISO 4217 and ISO 639, in particular ISO 3166, Country Codes. In brief, the issue is whether ANSI or other ISO national bodies, or ISO itself, should charge royalty fees for the use of the standard, in addition to a standard copyright fee for purchase or reproduction of the standard..."

"... INCITS' overriding concern is that this represents a radical departure from established practice with respect to standards. We are not concerned here with the fees collected by many standards setting organizations for purchasing copies of standards. Rather, the proposal being discussed would in effect place a charge upon implementing a standard by enforcing a fee associated with each copy of a product built according to or incorporating the standard. In essence, therefore, this charges users of a standard, be they direct (in the case of manufacturers) or indirect (in the case of product consumers) to actually use the standard."

"In INCITS' opinion this would constitute a strong disincentive for manufacturers, large consumers and consumer groups to develop standards within standards organizations which might adopt this process or to subsequently make use of the standards in their products and services. Standards participants, whether manufacturers, consumers, government agencies or other entities, bring their own information to the standards development process so that they can share in the resultant standard. In other words, standards participants have the expectation that in exchange for their 'valuable and volunteer' contributions, they will be able to 'use' the fruits of their consensus-building process without further hindrance."

"In the Information Technology industry, where many consortia and alternative standards-setting models to the formal standards development process already flourish, INCITS believes that the imposition of such usage fees would be likely to drive participation in standards development away from organizations which implement them. At the very least standards participants would probably adjust their priorities for involvement as a result."

Accordingly, INCITS requests the ANSI ISO Council to:

  • Adopt a position that fees for using the contents of standards, as opposed to fees for the purchase of the standards themselves, is inappropriate
  • Ensure that ANSI does not go forward with such a policy
  • Take this issue forward to ISO Council in the strongest possible terms to dissuade ISO and its members from this approach and from ISO policy

Reference is made to the INCITS Resolution in a memo from Cathy Wissink [Microsoft], Chair of INCITS Technical Committee L2, "Character Sets and Internationalization." INCITS TC L2 "is responsible for the creation and maintenance of U.S. standards for the coding of graphic and control characters for use in data processing systems and equipments. Graphic characters include the letters of the alphabet, digits, punctuation marks, etc. Control characters code the functions needed for the transmission, storage, manipulation and representation of graphic characters." Cathy Wissink notes that the impact of the proposed ISO royalties upon the industry would be "huge"; she urges the reader to "get the word out and have any formal organizations [...] take a position on this, and send it through their channels to their national standards setting organizations and ISO."

Letter from NISO Executive Director

"NISO, the National Information Standards Organization, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval, re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation... Designated by ANSI to represent U.S. interests to the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) Technical Committee 46 on Information and Documentation, NISO is well positioned to bring together all interested parties wherever they are based... NISO standards are available at no cost and are available freely on the web." [NISO 'About']

Patricia R. Harris, NISO Executive Director/Secretary posted a message to NISO members on the topic of the ISO Council's consideration of a "a new policy that would allow ISO to charge a licensing fee for embedding the ISO's coding standards -- ISO 3166 Country Codes, ISO 639 Language Codes, and ISO 4217 Currency Codes -- in software products." Excerpts from the memo of 2003-09-24:

"NISO is the U.S. Technical Advisory Group on ISO 3166 and ISO 639 [and] so is especially concerned about the implications of this change.

Today I contacted ISO and learned that the ISO's Commercial Policy Steering Group presented its proposal to the ISO Council last week. The ISO Council has asked for more information and 'asked the CPSG to make a clearer case for what they want to do.' The CPSG will likely report back to the Council in early-2004.

[We] now have an opportunity to influence the CPSG and persuade them to abandon this proposal... I plan to meet with the U.S. representative on the CPSG, Bob Feghali, ANSI's VP Business Development and CIO next week.

I feel strongly that all the standards developers and other organizations impacted by this proposal should work together to defeat it and [so I] have begun to contact other standards organizations to enlist their interest and support..." [source]

Letter from Health Level Seven (HL7) Board of Directors, Chair

"Health Level Seven is one of several ANSI-accredited Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) operating in the healthcare arena. Like all ANSI-accredited SDOs, Health Level Seven adheres to a strict and well-defined set of operating procedures that ensures consensus, openness and balance of interest. Most SDOs produce standards (sometimes called specifications or protocols) for a particular healthcare domain such as pharmacy, medical devices, imaging or insurance (claims processing) transactions. Health Level Seven's domain is clinical and administrative data. The HL7 mission is: To provide standards for the exchange, management and integration of data that support clinical patient care and the management, delivery and evaluation of healthcare services. Specifically, to create flexible, cost effective approaches, standards, guidelines, methodologies, and related services for interoperability between healthcare information systems. In July 2003, ANSI approved HL7 Version 2 XML Encoding Syntax as an American National Standard. HL7 v2.xml "defines the Extensible Markup Language (XML) encoding rules for traditional HL7 Version 2 message content."

In the past, Health Level Seven included the country codes from ISO 3166 in its distribution of HL7 specifications, which are freely available on the Internet. When ANSI communicated its ruling that HL7 would be charged a license fee for the use of the country codes, and that commercial implementers of the HL7 specifications would also be required to pay a license fee in connection with HL7 specification implementation, Health Level Seven discontinued its use of the ISO 3166 in the HL7 specification.

Wesley Rishel (Chair, HL7 Board of Directors) recently delivered a letter to ISO President Oliver Smoot on behalf of HL7:

September 19, 2003

Mr. Oliver Smoot
President, International Organization for Standardization
C/O The American National Standards Institute
25 W. 43rd Street
4th Floor
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Smoot:

Health Level Seven (HL7), an ANSI-accredited standards developing organization, strongly opposes the recent proposal by the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group to charge licensing fees for the use of ISO code sets for countries, languages, etc. As Tim Berners-Lee and Steve Bratt of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have argued, requiring a license fee for these codes will likely result in the creation and use of no-cost alternative codes. This will cause considerable confusion for the developers and the standards organizations that need to use these codes and, in our opinion, will also erode the ISO user base.

HL7 has already experienced this trend in the U.S. For example, ANSI's current policy of charging for the use of ISO standards in the U.S. has resulted in a recommendation by the HL7 Vocabulary Technical Committee that HL7 use FIPS country codes instead of ISO country codes. While we would hate to see this trend away from ISO codes continue, instituting license fees will leave us no choice.

HL7 is committed to working with W3C and other similar organizations in finding alternatives to code set licensing fees. Please feel free to contact the HL7 Headquarters office at 734-677-7777 should you wish to discuss this matter.

Sincerely,
Wesley Rishel
Chair, HL7 Board of Directors

Letter from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) to ISO

The The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is "a committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Its responsibilities include architectural oversight of IETF activities, Internet Standards Process oversight and appeal, and is responsible for the management of publication of the RFC Series and the management of the IETF protocol parameter registry, operated by the IANA."

A September 26, 2003 announcement from the IAB Executive Director concerning the ISO codes was referenced from the IAB home page and from the IAB Communications and Selected Documents as "Correspondance from IAB to ISO concerning availability of ISO Codes, 23-September-2003." The document presents a letter from Leslie Daigle (Chair, Internet Architecture Board) to ISO President Oliver Smoot as follows:

Date: September 26, 2003.

Mr. Smoot,

In ISO Council document 36/2003, and further in note AIC021-03: "Public availability of country, currency and language codes", there is a proposal for charging of ISO codes from ISO Infrastructure Standards such as ISO 3166 (country codes), ISO 4127 (currency codes), and ISO 639 (language codes).

The IAB also wants to point out the very good cooperation between the IETF and ISO which has made it possible to use the named standards in protocols used on the Internet such as HTTP, SMTP and the domain name system itself where delegations of country codes is done according to ISO 3166.

Having ISO charging for these codes would force the Internet Community not only to change existing protocols, but also start a discussion whether ISO 3166 country codes can be used as a basis for domain names in the future.

It is the view of the IAB that use of such codes must be royalty free.

Best regards,

Leslie Daigle,
Chair, Internet Architecture Board.

Letter from International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) Management Committee

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), "based in Windsor, England, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies, news publishers and news industry vendors. It develops and maintains technical standards that are used by virtually every major news organization in the world."

On behalf of the International Press Telecommunications Council Management Committee, IPTC Managing Director Michael Steidl sent a letter to ISO's Dr Oliver Smoot expressing deep concern about the policy change regarding ISO Codes. The letter protesting ISO's intent to levy fees was accompanied by a press release arguing that [in IPTC's view] ISO code fees are a threat to free exchange of news.

From the press release:

News From the International Press Telecommunications Council
IPTC Says ISO Code Fees Are a Threat to Free Exchange of News

Windsor, England. 2 October 2003.

The International Press Telecommunications Council has strongly protested against proposed royalties to be charged by the International Organization for Standardization (known as ISO) for the commercial use of its widely used codes. Licensing fees for ISO codes that represent languages, countries and currencies are a threat to the free exchange of news, the IPTC said.

In a letter to ISO, the IPTC -- the worldwide technical standards organization for the news industry -- says that the fees will have a "severe negative impact" on IPTC's ability to create freely available standards for the exchange of news. The IPTC's standards are the technical backbone for the exchange of news worldwide, and all IPTC standards produced since 1991 rely on ISO codes. The IPTC does not charge for its standards or technical publications; the entire cost is borne by IPTC's members. If ISO goes ahead with its proposed fees, virtually every computer system in the news industry will be liable for royalties.

In mid-September 2003, IPTC learned that ISO intends to charge a fee for the mere use of its letter codes that designate languages, currencies and countries. This includes commonly used country codes in Internet addresses, such as "uk", "jp" and "de"; language codes, such as "en", "fr" and "es"; and currency codes, such as "USD", "EUR" and "JPY". All will be subject to the new charges.

ISO has long earned its revenue by charging membership fees and by selling documents that describe its standard specifications. The actual use of the standardised values is free. ISO's proposed fees will damage the trust that has been placed in the standards process by industries around the world, many of which cannot afford even small fees. The free exchange and processing of standard values for the common good of users in both rich and poor nations has been a bedrock of commerce, science, the news industry and the World Wide Web.

The impact of ISO's proposed fees will be discussed at IPTC's next regular meeting, to be held in Leipzig, Germany, on 8 to 10 October 2003.

The IPTC, based in Windsor, England, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies, news publishers and news industry vendors. It develops and maintains technical standards that are used by virtually every major news organization in the world.

For more information: Michael Steidl, IPTC Managing Director, at mdirector@iptc.org. [see included file IPTC-PR-20031002_ISOCodeFeeProtest.doc]

From the letter of Michael Steidl (IPTC Managing Director) to Dr. Smoot:

Dear Dr Smoot,

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) is deeply concerned by the recent positions taken by the ISO with respect to royalties for the use of ISO Standards in software. The IPTC was established in 1965 to safeguard the technical interests in the free exchange of news among of the world's news industry. The IPTC represents the major news agencies, newspaper publishers, news distributors and system vendors for the news industry from around the globe. From this position IPTC expresses its concern over recent considerations at ISO to charge a fee on the implementation and use of ISO Codes, particularly ISO 639, 3166 and 4217, in commercial products. This step would not only be a breach of the recent ISO policy, and by that raising questions on the trustworthiness and reliability of ISO's policies, but as well raising basic questions on the understanding and use of standards.

For many years the IPTC has created and maintained standards for international news exchange. It is the expressed policy of the IPTC to use wherever possible ISO and other publicly available standards within its own guidelines. Therefore, many of them reference ISO Codes, like our Information Interchange Model (IIM, released 1991). The IIM requires the use of ISO Codes for languages in specific fields of its data structure. Later the IPTC built its standards on XML technology and implemented the use of the common "xml:lang" attribute referring RFC 3066 which makes the use of ISO Codes for languages mandatory. Apart from this common element the IPTC defined proprietary elements for defining languages and advised the implementers of its standards to use the ISO language code for this purpose.

The IPTC publishes their standards free of charge as downloadable files. The IPTC also does not request a royalty fee for the USE of its standards, which represent considerable value and intellectual property. These IPTC decisions to use ISO Codes for applying metadata to news were made on the assumption that the USE of these codes is also free of royalty fees. The new commercial policy of ISO would have a severe negative impact on the credibility of industry standards organisations like IPTC since we would provide a standard which implementation implies royalty fees to a third party and would not be "free" in its use anymore, as we advertised our standards for more than two decades.

Apart from being affected by ISO's change of policy as pointed out, the IPTC wants to draw your attention to the damage done to the trust into standardisation as a whole that would result from this step.

This proposed asking implementers to pay fees for the mere use of a standard would obviously split standards into two groups: One for standards on "tangible" products like e.g. screws where one only has to pay for buying this standard's document, and another group for "intellectual" products where one has not only to pay for the standard's document but also for implementing this standard. From your latest move one could derive as next step that e.g. any ISO 900x supporting quality assurance software vendor would be the next group that would be asked to pay fees for implementation. And as ISO starts considering this it could kick-off an avalanche: other standardisation body would say "why not me" and this could end up in a big uncertainty in the industry about the commercial reliability and perspective on standards.

We hope you reconsider your recent step on changing ISO's commercial policy as a step to reassure the trust of not only the news business we represent into international standardisation.

The Management Committee of IPTC as Board of Directors [including]: Dr John Iobst (NAA, Newspaper Association of America, Chairman), Stéphane Guérillot (AFP, Agence France Presse, Director), Nioshi Hashimoto (NSK, Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association, Director), Geoffrey Haynes (AP, Associated Press, Director), Rudi Horvath (APA, Austria Press Agency, Director), Peter M|ller (SDA/ATS, Swiss Press Agency, Director), Klaus Sprick (dpa, German Press Agency, Director), Henrik Stadler (TT, News Agency of Sweden, Director).

The Bigger Picture

For some industry experts, the question of collecting royalty payments for the use of ISO codes has a significance far beyond the particular case of introducing a fee/usage model for data elements previously believed to be completely unencumbered. At stake also is the notion that a single common code (as a data element) or that a collection of data elements can be "copyrighted" (as opposed to the copyright of a print document which instantiates an expression). Under current law, a mere compilation of facts (involving tedious work but not involving substantial creativity or expressiveness) cannot be copyrighted. According to Reuters ('Databases: The Next Copyright Battle?'), "Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are circulating a proposed bill that would prevent wholesale copying of school guides, news archives and other databases that do not enjoy copyright protection. The proposed bill would provide a legal umbrella for publishers of factual information such as courtroom decisions and professional directories..." Updates:

Disclaimer: No editorial opinion implicit or explicit in this news item should be understood as representing the viewpoint of OASIS or of any other corporate entity.

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