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RE: placing a dollar value on IETF IP.

2008-10-28 11:03:56
There was indeed a major struggle over the standardization of the light bulb 
socket. And the sad part is that due to patent encumberances the US 
unfortunately ended up with the inferior product!
 
Neither Swan nor Edison thought much about the mount. It was Swan's brother who 
did most to refine and perfect the base. Edison's screw thread came lose 
leading Swan to invent the bayonet mount. He also invented Vitrite, the glassy 
substance used as an insulator.
 
There was something of a platform war which led to calls for a standard base as 
misconfigured adaptors were causing houses to burn down. The Edison thread won 
in the US because the patent had expired and everyone could use it without 
royalty. 
 
It is also a neat rebuttal to the claim that network effects do not exist - as 
Margolis and co claimed in their laughable tract. If the issue were decided on 
technical grounds alone the US and Europe would have chosen the same base years 
ago. The US has not moved to the superior Swan mount because the short term 
switching costs outweigh the long term advantages. Change is only possible when 
a technology disruption occurs that negates the advantage of the legacy base. 
In the case of lightbulbs it is compact flourescents and LED bulbs, in the case 
of keyboards it would probably take really good handwriting recognition.

________________________________

From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org on behalf of Andrew G. Malis
Sent: Tue 10/28/2008 9:53 AM
To: TS Glassey
Cc: tbray(_at_)textuality(_dot_)com; IETF Discussion; ipr-wg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: placing a dollar value on IETF IP.



Todd,

I see your point about the cost of producing standards. However,
having been both on the vendor and service provider sides of the
street, I can tell you that most (all?) service providers generally
require their vendors to implement standards so that their products
are interoperable and meet particular requirements - in an RFP, it's
much easier to put in a list of RFCs, ITU-T recommendations, etc.,
rather than have to list every individual requirement. As a result,
vendors don't generally specifically track their standards
participation costs - it's just a part of the cost of doing business
in a particular market.

It all goes back to the light bulb as a great example of standards
setting - back before there was a standard base for bulbs, I'm sure
every light bulb manufacturer had a vested interest in their
pre-standard bases and sockets - whether it screwed left or right or
used push-in pins, the size of the base, etc., and sent people to the
meetings to represent their interests when that particular standard
was being set. It was just a necessary cost of being in the light bulb
business at that particular time.

Cheers,
Andy

On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 8:54 PM, TS Glassey <tglassey(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)net> 
wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew G. Malis" 
<agmalis(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
To: <tbray(_at_)textuality(_dot_)com>
Cc: "TS Glassey" <tglassey(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)net>; "IETF Discussion"
<ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>; <ipr-wg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2008 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: placing a dollar value on IETF IP.


Todd,

I generally agree with Tim that it would be difficult to put a value
on any IETF submission without an actual transfer of assets of some
sort to set a price.

The costs of replicating the works - say from a tech writer skilled in an
area is a reasonable place to start. Take the hourly rate and then multiply
that times the number of hours involved and the number of people.

I suggested that the unbundling of the R&D costs was appropriate since all
the IETF publishes is a set of document-standards per se.


However, in general, if a company feels that there is IPR value in
technology they are going to include in a submission (and this really
deals with ANY kind of standards submission, not just to the IETF),

How do you figure they 'deal' with how much it costs to send people to the
IETF several times a year. Also to cover the costs of their local
participation.

they will most probably submit a patent application prior to the
standards submission. So the existence of a patent declaration
accompanying the submission at least provides a clue that the
submitting company feels that there is some value there (else they
wouldn't have bothered with the patent application).

Only if there is a real program inside the Sponsor to accomplish that. This
is one of the issues in the IETF. There are many who are really enamored
with the idea that the IETF is a fraternal benevolent society rather than a
Intellectual Proeperty War Chest disguised cleverly as an International
Networking SDO.


However, a value generally can't be set until the company actually
starts to issue patent licenses. The value could be as little as zero
if no other companies feel compelled to license the technology.

As always, the "value of the workproduct", as you put it, is set by the
market.

But the costs of creating it are not. That was the point. The baseline is
the costs of replacing the written work.


Cheers,
Andy

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 11:42 AM, Tim Bray <tbray(_at_)textuality(_dot_)com> 
wrote:

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 8:27 AM, TS Glassey 
<tglassey(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)net>
wrote:

Since there is now a specific value estimated by the LINUX community at
1.4B
for the kernel itself

Hey, I've done an analysis and found that my toenail clippings are
worth $3.8762 billion.  That kernel-valuation exercise is the silliest
kind of science fiction.  Let me let you in on a little secret:
Everything in the world has a value, and that value is exactly what
people are prepared to pay for it.  No more, no less.

On payment of a generous consulting fee, I would be delighted to
"estimate a specific value" for any given RFC or even I-D.  I'll even
issue gold-framed certificates you can mount on the wall.  -Tim

, the IETF can no longer hide its head in the sand
claiming that its workproduct has no specific value. This also means
that
ANY AND ALL contributions to the IETF no matter when they happened now
need
to be formally acknowledged for their financial value at the time of
their
contribution.

This is not an OPTION.

Todd Glassey
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