Some old news (a month or so):
The hideous practice of publishing 'open' standards while asserting commercial ownership of ideas included in the standard has been adressed over the last couple of years by the W3C. That effort has been completed with the announcement of a royalty-free patent policy.

The effect of the patent policy is that all who participate in developing a W3C Recommendation must agree to license patents that block interoperability on a royalty-free basis

That's only half of what corporations interested in a standards organization Stamp of Approval should do, but on the other hand, if maintaining property of the specs can thwart other vendors effort to 'embrace and extend' (that's 'engulf and emasculate' in non-vendor speak) standards then fine by me.