On 15-okt-04, at 15:46, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
MMI's primary intention is to protect the research investment that has
allowed them to build faster and more accurate cheese graters than the
competition.
[...]
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.
Maybe I'm being naive here, but wouldn't it be possible for NMI to give
away a free license to use their patent in the WRAPCTL protocol only?
In copyright this is done all the time (although seldom for free): when
I buy a DVD, I get to watch its contents at home, but the license
doesn't allow me to show the movie in a theater or broadcast it over
the air.
In cases where the patent has a broader use than as part of a network
protocol this is actually good for the patent holder as now many
companies will be implementing it, which can easily lead to reuse of
said implementation for another purpose in which case a paid license
would be required.
This doesn't solve all open source issues, but it should make the
problem more manageable as the code that implements this protocol in
question can be reused by anyone, just as long as it's only used for
this specific protocol.
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