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I don't know if you guys are clear on exactly what the W3C is thinking about doing. What it is doing is considering the ability for standards that they create to be based on techniques that are patented. This, in general, will have very little effect on those who run websites. Instead, there will be more issues for those who create programs that view the various standards that the W3C create.
This has nothing to do with "patented" source code. In fact, you can't patent source code. You can copyright it however and the W3C has no right to tell you you can't copyright your website or Javascript code you use in it, etc. As far as software is concerned, you can only patent an algorithm; note that this only applies to patents in some countries (including the US). Software patents are not valid in much of Europe for example. Given that most web pages are copyrighted, I would be extrememly hesitant about "borrowing" any sort of code from them.
Matt
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