On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 09:59:53AM +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum allegedly wrote:
On 6-okt-04, at 6:12, Scott W Brim wrote:
However, there appears to be rough consensus emerging that an IPR
assertion is acceptable if any of the following are true:
- a license is explicitly not required.
- a license is explicitly free with no restrictions.
- a license is explicitly free with rights of "defensive suspension"
(what Harald calls "no first use").
This makes a lot of sense in cases where a patent is legit (for lack of
a better word).
Great.
However, the reason we're in such a big mess is that more and more
companies are registering patents of questionable merit.
Even if an IPR claim is "illegitimate", explicit free licensing lowers
the risk to the point where you can separate the questions of technical
merit and legitimacy, and hand off dealing with legitimacy.
This brings us right back to:
As Ted says, the IETF should stay out of passing judgment on the
validity of claims and/or fighting patents. It's really way outside of
our charter.
I gather that the US patent office pretty much rubber stamps patent
applications in the IETF's area of interest because they don't know how
to evaluate them. Maybe I'm being naive here, but it seems to me that
some kind of clue transfer from the IETF to the US patent office would
be beneficial to all except the patent lawyers who would then have to
start to do actual work to make a living.
The US patent office is overwhelmed, and acting like it's under a DoS
attack. I agree it would be great if we all offered technical
assistance, but not as the IETF. If needed we could create some other
organization. Let the IETF have a clear focus.
swb
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