Subject: AW: proposed charter

From: Hummel Heinrich <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 11:12:18 +0200

It is only my personal view:
The IETF may even encourage people to write patents, but may also promote a behavior
where company A will grant its patents, e.g. free of charges, however with a license statement,
which requests reciprocally the same from anyone who may, later on, aquire IPRs themselves based on the
patents of company A. 

Hereby company A may request this for itself, or, eventually for the entire group of companies which
LAUNCHED this technology.

There is only one problem with this view:
How to deal with a company B, which never intends to develop/implement anything at all.
That company B is never required to take license from company A.

Heinrich

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Scott Brim [mailto:[email-masked]]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 20. Juni 2002 17:57
An: Keith Moore
Cc: Steven M. Bellovin; [email-masked]
Betreff: Re: proposed charter

On Thu, Jun 20, 2002 11:35:22AM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> > A working group
> > should be comfortable even if all the ideas it will be considering are
> > patented.  That should be the goal of this particular effort.
> 
> I strongly disagree.  why should a WG be comfortable with wasting 
> its time and promoting one company's IPR?

Every for-profit company involved in the IETF has patents or wishes it
did.  The Internet has run on patented technology since day 0.  So when
you say "promoting one company's IPR" I suspect you're just using
rhetorical exaggeration.

> if the goals of IETF and IETF WGs are to promote standardization 
> and interoperabliity and to increase the functionality that
> people derive from the Internet, then patents should make any WG
> extremely uncomfortable.  they really are anathama to IETF's goals.

What would be anathema to the IETF's goals would be not to have any
doctrine at all for dealing with the reality of current technology.  By
prohibiting the IETF from treating with patented technology you kill the
IETF.  Death by irrelevancy.

> the goal of this effort should be to identify what can be done
> to further discourage use of patented tecnology in the Internet.

Well, you could outlaw patent suits, or make patents only valid for 18
months.  In addition, you could decide that IP should not be allowed to
run over Ethernet.  

Or, you could do some engineering -- figure out how to do what you want
given the materials you have to work with and the real situation, and
provide guidelines to working groups and participating companies.  Of
course unencumbered technology is preferred, but so is a really good
Internet.  The purpose of most patents is defensive.  You use patented
technologies every day, and for the most part you appreciate it.

..Scott

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From: Jonathan Rosenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 11:20:33 -0400

> aquire IPRs themselves based on the

As an example of such a thing, see my companies statement:

http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/DYNAMICSOFT-SIP-UNIFY.txt

I think that we need to encourage companies to take positions like this.
The traditional "fair and non-discriminatory terms" statement is devoid
of any real meaning. I have been in a case recently where a company has made
the standard statement, but refused to divulge what the actual terms
of license acquisition were. "fair" to a small company is much different
than "fair" to a large one. Rumor had it that they are out for big $$.

At the very least, I should hope that it is in scope of our work to
provide wg's with guidance on the kinds of statements they should be
looking for from the holders of IPR, and that "purely defensive" 
statements as the one above are to be preferred.

-Jonathan R.

-- 
Jonathan D. Rosenberg, Ph.D.            72 Eagle Rock Avenue
Chief Scientist                         First Floor
dynamicsoft                             East Hanover, NJ 07936
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