Subject: [Tsvwg] IPR disclosure relating to RFC 4960 - SCTP

From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:46:41 +0100

WG,

The IETF has received an IPR disclosure from Comcast IP holdings that
include RFC 4960 as related document. For those it concerns you can
review the declaration here:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1007/

Regards

Magnus Westerlund

IETF Transport Area Director & TSVWG Chair
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Multimedia Technologies, Ericsson Research EAB/TVM
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Ericsson AB                | Phone +46 8 4048287
Färögatan 6                | Fax   +46 8 7575550
S-164 80 Stockholm, Sweden | mailto: [email-masked]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: Randy Stewart <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:14:24 -0500

Magnus/David:

I am fascinated by this filing...

I guess one thing is I don't understand the format... it declares
publications which I recognized the US stuff..

US6131095
US6466570
US7012916
US7206304
US20050141491
US20070076687

These are all either US patents or Patent filings.. I have
looked at all of them and NONE of them are owned by commcast.. the
assignee is HP. Did commcast acquire these from HP?

They also appear to float around enum/DNS... looking up data to access
a voice stream etc.. SCTP's streams have nothing to do with voice...

So HOW does this effect SCTP?

Is there more information on what the claims are?

I have worked on SCTP since its inceptions which by the
way far pre-dates the 1998 when we first started the internet
draft process... I have code and implementations of early forms
of it going back to 1994 or so... maybe as early as
late 1993..

I would really like to understand what the claims are in regard
to RFC4960?

R

> IETF Transport Area Director & TSVWG Chair

-----
Randall Stewart
[email-masked]

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From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:39:16 +0100

> I would really like to understand what the claims are in regard

To be clear, I don't make any statement at all about how valid the
declaration is. I am only fulfilling my duty to inform the WG about a
declaration that has been made to the IETF that indicate that it relates
to an RFC produced by this WG.

Cheers

Magnus Westerlund

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From: "Brian F. G. Bidulock" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:38:51 -0700

Randy,

Randy Stewart wrote:                          (Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:14:24)
> So HOW does this effect SCTP?

I don't think that it does.  It looks like some entity trolling
HP's castoffs of questionable validity.  They threw in all the
SIGTRAN RFCs, probably 'cause ENUM referenced them, or they
referenced ENUM, so SCTP was not a stretch.  There appears to be
clear prior art to all of the claims (e.g. RFC 1530), so I
suppose the move might backfire.

Nevertheless, they can be a nuisance as they already have been
in the IPR report.  They are being fairly agressive already as
they do not offer reciprocal licensing.

But, IANAL, so don't take my word for it: consult your legal
department.

-- 
Brian F. G. Bidulock
[email-masked]
http://www.openss7.org/

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From: Randy Stewart <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:37:18 -0500

Brian:

I agree with all your comments.. I would guess
that they are trolling for the "host name address" parameter.
Its the only thing I can think of with regard to SCTP that
has anything to do with looking up a string and getting
a list of addresses back.

Now interestingly enough, none of us have implemented this
feature because we did not want it. It was added by
IESG fiat way back in RFC2960. I believe that one group
Spider (Artesys/Emerson now) implemented it under contract
because they were required to by HP.. but this is all from
foggy memory over the last 10 years. Interesting that HP is the assignee
on all these patents is it not :-)

I really would like to know what claim they have, most of SCTP I have
prototypes going back over 10 years... I worked on even one early
version back in 1992... obviously not every feature and not the
same as the final product... but I have evidence back that far.
Any lawyers out there on the list I will be more then glad to help
out if anyone brings a patent claim for anything other than the
host-name-address feature... :-)

If it is the host-name-address they are claiming.. then I think
that just adds further justification (besides the fact that we do
not have two implementations of it) for purging it when we go
to draft standard...

And of course .. I too am not a lawyer nor do I play one on tv :-)

R

-----
Randall Stewart
[email-masked]

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From: Michael Tüxen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:15:45 +0100

Hi Randy,

I'm not sure how they decided which RFC to mention...

But they also mentioned
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5133.txt
and this is only about a new packet type...

So maybe they just took everything related to SIGTRAN and
ENUM or so...

I doubt that they looked at a specific parameter. But I can be wrong.
And I'm not a layer...

Best regards
Michael

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From: Randy Stewart <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:28:30 -0500

Michael:

Maybe this is just shooting with a shotgun and seeing if you hit
something :-)

R

-----
Randall Stewart
[email-masked]