Michel Bouissou wrote:
John Levine a écrit :
The widely used fetchmail package includes a section of code that
determines the most likely responsible party for an e-mail message.
Its algorithm is similar to PRA but not identical.
This part of fetchmail was added in about 1996 and has been in daily
use since then by thousands of users all over the world during the
past eight years. The fetchmail code is under the GPL, but as far as
I know, nobody claims proprietary rights over its algorithms. Eric
Raymond, whose name is on the 2001 copyright notice in the file,
doesn't. Since it was published so long ago it's unlikely that any
claims are yet to surface.
This finding is excellent and the idea is very smart. IANAL, but I believe
this is clearly and doubtlessly old enough "prior art" in determining the
purported sender of a message by checking the presence of a succession of
defined headers in an email, no matter what exact headers are used, this
is blatantly similar to the PRA method.
I believe this should probably be enough to invalidate any pretention from
MS of owning the "property" of such an "invention", and probably breaks
the validity of their (yet undisclosed precisely) patent claim.
Even if there isn't enough time for the lawyers to get back to us,
nevertheless an alternative draft without IPR problems should be
preferred according to RFC 3668, section 8 unless it is superior:
" In general, IETF working groups prefer technologies with no known IPR
claims or, for technologies with claims against them, an offer of
royalty-free licensing. But IETF working groups have the discretion
to adopt technology with a commitment of fair and non-discriminatory
terms, or even with no licensing commitment, if they feel that this
technology is superior enough to alternatives with fewer IPR claims
or free licensing to outweigh the potential cost of the licenses.
"
Yakov