ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Shuffle those deck chairs!

2004-10-15 08:20:52
Margaret Wasserman <margaret(_at_)thingmagic(_dot_)com>:
I am afraid that your choice below won't mesh very well with why 
companies have software patents in the first place.

You're right, it doesn't.  Unfortunately, we really cannot live with
anything less than I have described.  My personal wish that this
reality were different is as fruitless as yours.

However, in doing this, MMI wants to ensure two things:

(1) That they continue to protect their patent rights regarding the 
use of this technique for other purposes (such as cheese graters and 
IP phones).  So, they want to limit the royalty-free terms to 
implementation of the IETF's WRAPCTL protocol and/or to use on 
Wireless Access Points.  (I think that this would run amok of your 
proscription against "restricting the area of application", right?)

Right.

Area-of-application rules mean that code reuse can be fraught with
dangerous legal problems because of someone's well-meaning judgment
call about what's in-area and what is out-of-area.  Such legal
exposure is death to us -- our project groups can't afford lawyers to
fight those battles -- so our licensing requirements have to foreclose
that entire category of causes of action.  Otherwise our development
and distribution methods, which depend on code reuse and redistribution
being safe and friction-free, would seize up and croak.

Myself, I'll cheerfully recognize that MMI's interest is legitimate in
some sense -- I wish I knew of a way to solve this problem that doesn't
have deadly poison side-effects, and have devoted a lot of think time
to trying to invent one.  No joy.
 
(2) That they maintain and enhance the defensive value of their 
patent, by making it clear that the royalty-free terms do not apply 
to anyone who sues them for violation of a different patent.  (If I 
understand correctly, the OSS community doesn't have a problem with 
this concept, as long as no paperwork is required?).

That's correct.

Are there any IPR terms that MMI could offer that would meet these 
goals while also allowing the WRAPCTL protocol to be implemented in 
OSS implementations?  If we could find that middle ground, I think it 
would be very valuable to the IETF and to the OSS community.

I don't believe any such middle ground exists.  I and others have tried
to imagine it into existence and failed.  We regret this, but it seems
to be reality.
 
The sad truth, of course, is that (in the example above) it is far 
more likely that MMI would not determine that the WRAPCTL protocol 
violated their patents until longer after it had been standardized by 
the IETF and implemented in many commercial and OSS implementations. 
So, what would be do then?

Suffer a lot.

What your scenario demonstrates is that there is a fundamental and 
nigh-unbridgeable conflict between open-source development and the
patent system.  The open-source community is already well aware of
this, thank you.  We don't know what to do about it either.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>