Yaakov - Did you cut that from Nolo's site - they are good people.
My argument is that the negotiation of the protocol inside the IETF's
vetting process is identical to two engineers arguing and then coming to a
new aesthetic implementation, its the new fenders for the truck., or a new
warning buzzer when the protocol fails step two - whatever step two was.
Don't confuse the term aesthetic here to mean something that it doesn't - or
to limit the process of the Utility Patent protection to things that you
'look at'.
Likewise, design patents (as opposed to plant patents) could also be used
and probably with better luck, but there is more cost to issuing and
researching/prosecuting the claims therein.
FWIW I initially tried to fit the design model into the Copyright Alone
model and couldn't. I needed at least the Patent processes "Aesthetic
Design" provisions to make this all work. And yes I agree that the IETF's
processes are probably better covered under a comprehensive patent and
publishing rights process - something it isn't terribly interested in doing
apparently.
As to the rest of the Open Source world that has relied on these copyright
alone licenses, and with much pain and suffering too - look at the latest
revision to the EFF's license...
And all of this leads me to believe that more and more opensource code is
unpatentable and unprotectable as such. If it is the intent of this
management team to take the IETF to where it provides something close to
Open Source services then we have a real problem I think since no one
bothered to disclose this to the rest of the membership or those
contractually bound to the IETF in their participation agreements, which
IMHO is a real issue.
As to the reliance on a copyright statement alone to cover the IETF's use,
that is IMHO broken. The IETF's reliance on "That there must be two
physically interoperable ports of any protocol" implemented to meet the
Standards Practice takes this out of the Copyright alone Area and creates
that Industrial Design that has to be protected.
My point to the Aesthetic Patent was that it was a tad easier to deal with
IMHO.
Todd Glassey
----- Original Message -----
From: "Yaakov Stein" <yaakov_s(_at_)rad(_dot_)com>
To: <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 11:59 PM
Subject: RE: WIPO issues (was: Network Endpoint Assessment (nea))
To qualify for protection, an industrial design must be aesthetic,
and I believe that elegant design should be one of our goals in protocol
design.
However, industrial designs are "divorced from all technical aspects of
the article",
and thus at least some small portion of our ongoing work may be
ineligible for protection.
A major obstacle to be overcome before applying for design protection
for our work
is the fact that ASCII RFCs can not contain lines or colors,
and would probably be rejected by the appropriate national offices.
Finally, please note the treaties:
Terribly Complex Protection for Intellectual Property (TCP/IP)
Ugly Dumb Protection for Intellectual Property (UDP/IP)
may directly impact our work.
Y(J)S
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