The World Wide Web Consortium is opening the possibility of pushing back against an Apple patent on software updates that Apple had refused to license royalty-free for use in a proposed Web standard. The patent, which Apple applied for in 1995 and was granted in 1998, involves this scenario: "a software program running on a computer automatically replaces itself with a newer version in a completely automated fashion, without interruption of its primary function, and in a manner that is completely transparent to the user of the computer."