In general, this IPR debate seems to be missing several relevant parts of
the discussion.
The discussion seems to be focussed on the case where a company brings
forward a proposal, and simultaneously has or applies for a patent. That
is one interesting case. It does cause problems. It is hard to
control. But the other cases are much harder:
At the time when VRRP was chartered we knew that Cisco claimed relevant
patents, and that while they were (to my perspective) trying to be
cooperative they would not guarantee that whetever the working group did
they would provide free licensing on their existing technology.
Should we have refused to charter the working group?
In anumber of working groups, as the work was going along, vendors have
come forward with claims that they have patents that are (or may be)
relevant to the work. We once (probably more than once) tried to actually
have IETF counsel determine whether these patents were likely to be
relevant. The result of this experience was the conclusion that the IETF
should NEVER get into that game.
As such, we are in no position to evaluate patent claims. We simply
publish them.
Whould we then prevent standardization if anyone claims a patnet that is /
may be relevant to practicing the standard under consideration unless they
promise to license freely?
That is a recipe for disaster!
For those who do not se why...
Anyone who did not like a standard could undertake a bit of work, file for
a related patent, and then claim that they thought it was necessary to
practice the standard. Since we can not be in the business of validating
such claims, any such policy would inherently provide lots of companies,
particularly large companies, with a way to block things they don't like.
Then there are the folks who are not participating in a particular activity
at the IETF, but then conclude (after we standardize) that they have a
relevant patent. Should we declare the standard historic?
And then there are the folks who do not even participate in the IETF...
Yours,
Joel M. Halpern
At 07:54 AM 5/31/2002 -0600, Vernon Schryver wrote:
> From: Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu
> > In still other words, don't you remember the years of pain
> > Motorola/Codec caused PPP with those two bogus patents?
>
> I guess what I was asking was how the IETF would feel about an organization
> grabbing a patent on an algorithm and using it the same way the GNU crew
> uses copyright on source code. (Remember - the GNU copyright only works
> for *code* - since algorithms can be (at least in the US) patented but not
> copyrighted, you'd have to do a similar stunt with a patent).
>
> (And yes, this would be a case of "the Good Guys file a bull-manure patent
> to pre-empt the Evil Guys from filing a bull-manure patent" - but until the
> Patent Office gets their act together we're stuck with borked software
patents
> that are invalid due to prior art, etc....)
In theory that could happen. It may have happened in practice with
the Ethernet patent. But what's the point? What is gained by
winning such a patent from government(s) compared to publishing
the same document, other than a year or three of jumping through
hoops and plenty of money and hassles?
If you look at patents, you soon see that there's nothing special about
software patents and that the problems with the system are more than
100 years old. What would you expect from giving lawyers and government
bureaucrats (specifically including examiners) the responsibility and
authority to determine the validity (e.g. no perpetual motion) and
novelty of other people's ideas? Government central planning of
economies is more or less dead (for now), but government central planning
for science and technology lives in the West.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com