We think there are just too many open switches on this right now for us to go in and do something there. Given the charter, it's not clear what anyone other than Microsoft is going to be doing on this committee.

The choice occurs at the applications that you use-- it's really critical. You don't really want lots of standards underneath. The goal is to have one really good one and then we want a choice of different implementations that...work on different platforms.

There's a lot of practical interest and a lot of academic interest in the patent system. And I think the community is going to be extremely motivated to do (reviews).

If you now go off and develop new standards, and standardize certain processes, you don't have to worry about IBM coming in and asserting our patents. We are not going to be a roadblock. What we hope this encourages people to do is bring health care and educational standards up a notch.

If these designated groups build their next generation of healthcare and education standards on web services, electronic forms, and open document standards, and they do so within rules of maintaining compatibility and interoperability, then IBM will not assert any of our patents on implementers of these new healthcare and education standards.

I think there are a lot more questions than answers here.