On Fri, 31 May 2002 08:40:17 +0300, Pekka Savola said:
A bad thing IETF could do (but not the worst luckily :-) is to give a
signal "Ok.. feel free to patent and give RAND licensing.. depending how
good it is, we might give it a standards status or we might not". That
_encourages_ to do patents (or try to), and we want to avoid that.
Patents *in and of themselves* are not a Bad Thing. As far as the IETF goes,
the problem only arises when the patent is used to enforce a restrictive
licensing policy.
Can anybody think of a reason the IETF should object to patented tech *per se*,
as opposed to objecting to *hard-to-license* patented tech (the latter I think
we have consensus as being a Bad Thing)...
--
Valdis Kletnieks
Computer Systems Senior Engineer
Virginia Tech
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