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Submission request to W3C (W3C Staff Comment)

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We, the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), a member of W3C, hereby submit to the Consortium the following specification comprising the document(s) linked below:

1. SDML Specifications 2.0

which collectively are referred to as "the submission". We request the submission be known as the SDML submission.

Abstract

The SDML 2.0 specification describes a generic method for digitally signing a document, one or more sections of a document and/or multiple documents together. The signed documents may be web pages, e-mail messages or any text based documents. SDML requires the use of public key cryptography and hash algorithms and will support all of the common methodologies in use today and those which will be developed in the future. The authors of SDML have defined its structure, in part, through the use of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SDML is a generalization of the Financial Services Markup Language (FSML), developed by the Financial Services Technology Consortium. FSML defines the specific document parts needed for electronic checks, e.g., the tags needed to identify check specific data items, the semantics of the data items, and processing requirements for electronic checks.

Intellectual property Rights

FSTC agrees that, upon adoption of this contribution as a W3C Recommendation, FSTC shall grant to any W3C member a non-exclusive license under all rights owned by FSTC to implement and use the technology described in this contribution for the purposes of supporting the W3C Recommendation on a royalty-free basis. One condition of this license shall be the party's agreement to not assert patent rights against FSTC and other companies for their implementation of the W3C Recommendation. FSTC expressly reserves all other rights it may have to the material and subject matter of this contribution. FSTC expressly disclaims any and all warranties regarding this contribution including any warranty that this contribution does not violate the rights of others or is fit for a particular purpose. We also agree that once the document is submitted, it is subject to the terms expressed in the W3C IPR Document Notice.

Names

The following are registered marks referred to in this request or the submission: n/a.

Specification

The submission may be distributed within the membership of the W3C free of any fee.

The submission may be distributed publicly free of any fee under the redistribution terms expressed in the W3C copyright statement.

Implementation

The following points should be noted as regards licensable technology involved in any third party implementations of the technology specified in the submission: n/a.

Suggested action

We suggest that the Consortium hold a workshop to discuss the submission and/or adopt the submission as a Recommendation and to continue evolution of the proposal within the Digital Signature Initiative work areas.

Resources

To help with this work, we expect to be able to provide one non-resident document editor to the Consortium.

Change Control

Should any changes be required to the document, we would expect future versions to be produced by W3C process.

Contact

Inquiries from the public or press about this submission should be directed to:

Jim Luisi

Financial Services Technology Consortium

(312) 527-6724

jim_luisi@fstc.org

Submitted

This 8th day of June, 1998

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