Subject: Re: LAST CALL COMMENT CLARIFICATIONS IPR statement?

From: "Douglas E. Engert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 14:42:24 -0500

To: "Douglas E. Engert" <[email-masked]>
Cc: Ken Raeburn <[email-masked]>, [email-masked],
        Russell Housley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: LAST CALL COMMENT CLARIFICATIONS IPR statement? 
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Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 15:34:10 -0400
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Message-Id: <[email-masked]>

See the discussion of trademarks in draft-ietf-ipr-submission-rights-06.txt
and draft-ietf-ipr-wg-guidelines-05.txt.  (Those documents are half-way 
through WG last call.)

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)

---

From: "Douglas E. Engert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 15:28:32 -0500

As Steve points out:  
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipr-wg-guidelines-05.txt
and http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipr-submission-rights-06.txt
are very informative. 

The guidlines section 5.3 is especially relevent:

   Similarly, when evaluating a technology, working group participants
   consider IPR claims on it (including possible copyright issues with
   text describing it).  The issue is not whether a particular piece of
   technology is IPR-impacted -- we use IPR-impacted technology every
   minute.  The question is how much the IPR protection will limit the
   technology's usefulness in building a robust, highly useful Internet.
   Thus, the only significant questions are: is the IPR claim relevant,
   and what are the terms under which the technology can be used?  When
   technology is free from IPR protection the answer is easy.  When it
   is IPR-impacted, some licensing terms make the IPR issues
   insignificant compared to the engineering issues.  Other terms can
   make a technology unusable even if it is perfect otherwise.

   The problem with IPR as a technology evaluation factor is that it is
   unlikely that a working group, as an entity, can ever claim to have
   reached consensus on most IPR issues.  The IETF as a whole, and a
   working group as a whole, takes no stance on the validity of any IPR
   claim.  It would be inappropriate for a working group chair to
   declare that consensus had been reached that, for example, a
   company's patent was invalid.  Individual participants will need to
   use whatever legal advice resources they have access to in order to
   form their own individual opinions.  Discussions about the validity
   of IPR may take place under the auspices of the working group, in
   particular about relative risks of technology choices. Individual
   participants may take these discussions into account.  The working
   group as a body may not take a stance on validity, but it may make
   choices based on perceived risk.

The issue as I see it is the trademark for "Kerberos" by MIT. Personally 
I see the perceived risk as very low for these reasons:

  o MIT has allowed past RFCs to use the term Kerberos. RFC 1510 has the 
    same trademark notice. 

  o The original authors of Kerberos from MIT where involved with the
    earlier RFCs.

  o 3 of the 4 current authors of the Clarifications are from MIT.

  o Multiple vendors have been allowed to use the "Kerberos" trademark
    or claim compatibility with RFC 1510 in their products, include Microsoft,
    IBM, HP and Sun. 

  o I know of no time where MIT has denied the use of the "Kerberos" trademark.
    (But I have not done any research on this.)  

So in my option, the text in the Clarifications looks appropriate, as it
states there is a trademark. It is up to an implementor to deiced if the
trademark would not be granted and would effect their use of the Clarifications
document. Based on known past experience this should not cause any problems.

-- 

 Douglas E. Engert  <[email-masked]>
 Argonne National Laboratory
 9700 South Cass Avenue
 Argonne, Illinois  60439 
 (630) 252-5444