Each Community and Business Group draft Specification includes this copyright statement:
Copyright © [Date] the Contributors to the [Name/Version Information] Specification, published by the W3C [Name of Community/Business Group] under the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA). A human-readable summary is available.
Note for Editors: For markup boilerplate, please see the Report Requirements.
Summary of Key License Terms
The W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA) expresses the full agreement between the contributors (“I” in the license agreement) and you (“you” in the license agreement). The following is a handy, human-readable expression of key terms of the CLA. This summary is not the actual agreement. This summary has no legal value or effect and its contents do not appear in the actual agreement.
What Contributors Give under the CLA
Under the CLA, each contributor gives everyone:
- Copyright – a royalty-free license to use the copyrights for their Contributions; see section 2 of the agreement.
- Patent – a commitment to license on a royalty-free basis their essential patent claims reading on their Contributions; see sections 3 and 12 of the agreement as well as section 9 regarding transition to the W3C Recomendation Track.
Note: Contributors have a 45-day opt-out from the date they contribute material; see section 5 of the agreement.
What the Community Gets
The community is free to:
- Share – copy and distribute the Specification.
- Modify the Specification – make new versions of the Specification. If you make new versions of the Specification you must include attribution to the original Specification (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
- Implement the Specification – secure the royalty-free rights from contributors necessary to implement the specification.
Use of Trademark
See section 4 of the agreement.
Representations, Warranties and Disclaimers
See section 11 of the agreement.