Francis Gurry, the Director of the UN's WIPO, claims the web would have been better if Tim Berners-Lee had patented HTML and licensed it. He does so on camera and in front of shocked members of the Internet Society and CERN. Ironically, exactly this thought experiment came up for the web's 20th birthday on this August 6th.

For a more rigorous perspective, three Boston University School of Law faculty have shown that lawsuits by non-practicing entities, aka patent trolls, have cost technology companies half a trillion dollars of lost wealth over the past two decades, with little benefit to small inventors, instead reducing the incentive to innovate. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on Oct 9, 2011 - 80 comments

Long Live the Web — An impassioned plea to actively support openness on the Web from Tim Berners-Lee. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Nov 19, 2010 - 8 comments

The Future of the Web
A fascinating, breathless hour-long talk (+Q&A) recently given by Sir Tim (mp3 & mp4, no transcript available). For the lazy, this recent interview covers much the same ground. [more inside]
posted by MetaMonkey on Apr 2, 2006 - 16 comments

Blogs fulfill Berners-Lee vision of the World Wide Web according to this interview on BBC.
posted by bobbyelliott on Aug 11, 2005 - 8 comments