Subject: (ngtrans) Fwd: Disclosure of Patents to the IETF (regarding ngtrans efforts)

From: Bob Fink <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 14:21:03 -0800

NGtrans folk,

We (IETF and NGtrans WG Chairs) received the following email from British
Telecommunications plc today. I won't try to interpret this yet, though it
would appear to possibly have serious implications for ngtrans' work.

We (the IETF, ADs, co-chairs and whoever else is appropriate) are trying to
decide what the appropriate next step is.

More as we know it :-)

Thanks,

Bob

===
>From: [email-masked]
>To: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
>Cc: [email-masked]
>Subject: Disclosure of Patents to the IETF 
>Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 17:05:37 -0000 
>
>In accordance with the IETF Rules,  BT would like to disclose that we have
>recently applied for patents in the IPv6 space relating to:
>
>*	the establishment of tunnels using DNS as the tunnel endpoint
>discovery mechanism and
>*	a mechanism that enables translation and tunneling to be combined
>into a single device.
>
>BT does so in the belief that these recent patent application are relevant
>to present discussions within the IETF.
>
>Regards,
>Peter
>Peter Hovell
>Futures Lab
>B29, Room 128, Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, IP5 3RE
>Tel: 01473 644208
>eMail: [email-masked]
>==================
>British Telecommunications plc
>Registered Office 81 Newgate Street London EC1A 7AJ
>Registered in England no 1800000
>

---

From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 09:06:47 -0500

Well one thing is for sure any transition I would have implemented I
will not implement if this patent is involved.  I would also suggest to
the powers that be that any work that is being worked on now that is
affected by these patents be immeidately taken off standards track, to
send a clear and direct message to the authors of such work.

I would like to point out that a part of DSTM being AIIH plays games
with tunnels and DNS and DHCPv6.  I was asked to defensively patent that 
and did not and also made sure no one else can by making full and public 
disclosure within the IETF, Interop, and several speaking engagements to 
consultants.

If engineers want to avoid patents here in the IETF it is pretty easy to
do so talk to your lawyers.  Defensive patents in this IETF space are not
necessary if you disclose your work in a specific way, which in my mind
is the ONLY honorable reason to patent software (my personal opinion).

/jim

---

From: Peter Tattam <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999 16:41:26 +1100 (EST)

I personally believe that software patents are morally wrong and they do great
damage to the whole IT industry, not just the Internet.

I voice my strong disapproval of this sad event.

It is high time that the industry woke up to the evil that this kind of
intellectual property promotes.

Peter

--
Peter R. Tattam                            [email-masked]
Managing Director,    Trumpet Software International Pty Ltd
Hobart, Australia,  Ph. +61-3-6245-0220,  Fax +61-3-62450210

---

From: Dancer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 05:55:42 +0000

I think the industry _is_ awake to it. It gets protests, and
letter-writing campaigns, and all sorts of negative media-publicity.

It also keeps happening. I also disapprove, and will be taking what
little action I may by encouraging friends and relatives in the UK to
protest this...but I don't see software patents going away anytime soon.

At least we got told beforehand. They, like others, could have sat on it
for a month or two before pointing out that they held the patent.

Stupidly enough, I actually use DNS entries to configure my v6 tunnels
between boxen. It was handy to have a centralised point of
configuration.

D

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1999 16:25:15 +0000 (GMT)

Hi, 

The patent most likely applies to BT's Ultima, which is NAT/PT
with DNS using a text record to advertise a v6 endpoint from the
destination Ultima box back to the source box in a v6-v4-v6 scenario.

See:

http://www.ipv6forum.org.uk/navbar/globalsummit/slides/zips/john.king.zip

which is BT's talk on the system from the IPv6 Forum event at Paris
last month.  

The HMTL sides are here:

http://www.ipv6forum.org.uk/navbar/globalsummit/slides/html/john.king/

but animated slides appear as one munged unreadable page...

I guess all will become clear at the Monday morning ngtrans session!

Tim

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 12:00:09 -0600

What is lacking in the BT statement is a declaration of BT's
intent (or otherwise) to adhere to the conditions of 
RFC 2026, section 10.3.2(C). Without this we can't judge
the impact of this.

  Brian