Subject: Re: [Cfrg] License for CLEFIA in RFC 6114 and draft-katagi-tls-clefia-02

From: David McGrew <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2014 08:39:40 -0500

Thanks, Stephen, for your quick and detailed response.

Let me restate this for the benefit of folks who are not familiar with 
how to look for IPR considerations for IETF drafts and RFCs.   Use the 
"tools" interface  by using the URL https://tools.ietf.org/html/docname, 
where "docname" is the RFC or draft of interest, then look for the "IPR" 
link at the top of the page.

David

On 01/30/2014 06:04 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
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> Hiya,
>
> On 01/30/2014 10:04 AM, Joachim Strömbergson wrote:
>> Aloha!
>>
>> I took a brief look at RFC 6114 which provides informational
>> description of the CLEFIA cipher. In the RFC I don't see any
>> reference to licensing of IP claims on the cipher.
> Yes it can be hard to know where to find that, but it
> exists. RFCs generally do not contain IPR stuff in the
> body of the RFC these days, as RFCs do not change but
> licensing does. There's also the not-well-understood
> factoid that 6114 is an independent submission RFC and
> is not an IETF or IRTF stream RFC. Its common for
> algorithm descriptions to be independent stream RFCs
> as they are often just copies of something else and
> so not really under IETF or IRTF change control.
>
> But anyway, if you look at the IETF tools page [1] for
> 6114 there is a link to the IPR declarations [2] that
> were made for that. To fully grok that you might also
> need to understand the IETF's general IPR rules [3]
> which are also generally used in the IRTF in case
> work moves from one to the other.
>
> Even if this isn't an IETF document, people tend to
> want to follow those rules if they hope their
> encumbered algorithms might get broader adoption.
> (In my personal opinion, having any patent on your
> crypto stuff is a fine way of ensuring that it is
> not likely to get broad adoption, but people filing
> patent applications don't seem to get that;-)
>
>     [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6114
>     [2]
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/search/?option=rfc_search&rfc_search=6114
>     [3] https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp79
>
>> draft-katagi-tls-clefia-02 which presents a way of adding CLEFIA to
>> TLS does not contain any information about licensing nor claimed
>> rights.
> Same as above, you can find that via [4] at [5].
>
>     [4] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-katagi-tls-clefia-02
>     [5]
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/search/?option=document_search&document_search=draft-katagi-tls-clefia
>
>> There is however a license for CLEFIA, a license that seems to
>> combine an open BSD license with a quite strict license which makes
>> it impossible for anyone but Sony to develop support for CLEFIA:
>>
>> http://www.sony.net/Products/cryptography/clefia/download/
>>
>> (Nota bene: IANAL)
>>
>> The RFC is a done deal, but wouldn't it be appropriate to add a
>> section in the draft about licensing and IP rights. And to point to
>> the License agreement?
>>
>>
>> Also, the link to the technical related information for CLEFIA in
>> section 7 of the draft seems to be broken.
>>
>> (This link:
>> http://www.sony.net/Products/cryptography/clefia/technical/related_material.html)
> That'd
> be one for the authors. If that draft were to
> become an RFC (and I don't recall if the TLS wg have
> looked at it or not), then the RFC editor would likely
> want it fixed before publication as well to reference
> something more stable.
>
> Cheers,
> S.
>
>
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