The body that OK's new web standards, W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) has announced that it's new policy on patents has been approved by the membership.

Although the announcement doesn't guarantee that all future W3C standards will be fee-free (note: not patent-free), it does reserve that possibility for circumstances that are extraordinary.

This looks to me to be a nice compromise. You can have your intellectual property rights, but if you want to be a standard, you need to let everybody else use it.