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Re: A priori IPR choices

2007-10-23 06:49:07
On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 03:10:29PM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
"Frank Ellermann" <nobody(_at_)xyzzy(_dot_)claranet(_dot_)de> writes:

Do you refer to the IBM patent on BOCU?  As far as I have understood,
IBM promised to grant a free patent license to people who requested it,
but people never received a license despite requesting one.  If this is
accurate, I think it is a good example of a technology that should not
be standardized and should not be promoted by the community.

Can someone give an example of someone who has requested a license but
not received one, please?  (For reference, there is a copy of a letter
which was apparently sent from IBM to the Unicode consortium here:
http://unicode.org/notes/tn6/)

Since the letter was sent in January 2006, IBM has moved to a new way
of dealing with patents and standards, with its "Interoperability
Specification Pledge", which is essentially an irrovocable covenant
not to assert any Necessary Claims to anyone making, using, importing,
selling, or offerring for sale any Covered Implementations, with a
broad defensive clause.  This was announced in July of this past year,
and more details can be found here:

     http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/opensource/ispinfo.shtml

BOCU is not on the list of Covered Specifications, but my guess is
that such an omission is very likely due to an oversight rather than
any kind of maliciousness.  The good news is this new framework
doesn't require any kind of formal request to obtain a patent license,
and so hopefully a request to move the offer of a RF license covering
BOCU to the Interopreability Specification Pledge framework would
hopefully take care of your issue.

                                                - Ted

P.S.  All opinions stated above are my own, and do not necessarily
reflect IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

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