It seems to me that in some sense that disclosing a patent should not
make us less willing to use something. This is especially true when
the disclosing party is not obligated to make the disclosure.
Disclosing a patent along with an implication that the patent will be
enforced or that the patent is high value should make us less willing
to use a technology. I'll even except that absent royalty-free
licensing a typical patent disclosure has the implication of desire to
enforce the patent.
I think it is very dangerous to infer anything like "desire to enforce
the patent". These are situations where you actually have to read the
specifics to know what it is going. That's why we already have
strong encouragement to include license statements with
IPR disclosures (see the declaration form, section VI). The availability
of for-royalty patent licenses along side other types of licenses, as in
the statement at
http://www1.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/cisco-ipr-draft-ietf-ecrit-lost-06.txt
may or may not change the calculus of a developer who intends
to implement this. But it is clearly neither the same as a case where
all licenses are royalty bearing nor the case where all licenses are
free. Nor is it the same as a license where the maximum fee requested
is guaranteed to be a percentage (and hence zero for free implementations).
Again, speaking just for myself.
regards,
Ted
PS. My apologies to my Cisco colleagues if I appear to be consistently
using your declarations as examples. No harm intended.
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