Hi,
I am a new speaker on the "IETF airwaves," but I felt I could not resist the
urge to comment. Although I am head of IP at VMware, I can only speak for
myself and not for the company.
It seems to me that people arguing to establish an IPR Advisory Board have
the better argument. I understand that lawyers are loath to opine on issues
because they are afraid their opinions might be relied upon, and, in this
litigious society, that might somehow result in liability to themselves.
Despite that, however, there are ways of providing information that can be
useful. In addition, there are economies to be had by everyone's putting
their resources together.
I have read e-mails from people who advocate that IETF ought not to get
involved and, instead, ought to let "users" fend for themselves. These
people apparently have resources to deal with all such issues unilaterally.
However, in my opinion, even such people are wasting funds for their
companies by going it alone on each issue. My experience is that,
especially in these financially troubling times, wise use of resources is
always a good thing to do. In addition to spreading the expense, there is
an additional benefit of taping into the technical resources of many, and
using the "eyes of many" to improve the reliability of technical and legal
analyses much in the way open source improves software.
If nothing else, information provided by such analyses provides a basis for
understanding a potential problem. Benefit results, for example, since
identifying a bogus problem, enables development to progress unimpeded.
Similarly, by identifying a real problem, development may, if people wish,
be directed to ways around the problem.
It seems to me that a standards group should not merely be a forum to
develop a standard, but that it should provide a standard that can be used
commercially by at least the group that helped to develop it. That means
developing a standard which will not exclude those not having sufficient
resources to perform their own IP analysis (and presumably not shared for
legal reasons). Otherwise, why work to develop a standard that only the
"well heeled" can use confidently.
Mike Einschlag
-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Rosen [mailto:lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com]
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 4:50 PM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
Paul Hoffman wants:
In this case, "worked-out" means a document
that describes the the current solution, the advantages and disadvantages
of it, a proposal for a new solution, and a transition plan.
Paul, I'm not sure what more you're asking for at this stage. This list is
lively with suggestions, convincing me that IPR issues continue to dominate
the IETF airwaves. A "worked-out" document would be premature in this
context.
One suggestion, now a specific topic on this list if you care to respond
directly, is for the creation of an IETF IPR Advisory Board to help people
everywhere--including thousands of disaffected FSF campaigners--to
understand why certain patents (including the Redphone "patent") are not
worth worrying about.
The charter would be: "Answer IPR questions that are posed by other IETF
working groups." The quality of its answers, as with any IETF working group,
will be at least partly a function of the quality of its participants.
This suggestion is perhaps the most important currently before us, because
an IETF IPR Advisory Board will be able to stop FSF campaigns and other
distractions before they start with facts instead of fiction. What would YOU
suggest for a charter for such an Advisory Board to keep it from crossing
into any forbidden areas?
Or is it every man and woman for themselves in these patent-infested waters?
/Larry
Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243
Skype: LawrenceRosen
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Hoffman [mailto:paul(_dot_)hoffman(_at_)vpnc(_dot_)org]
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 3:20 PM
To: lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: RE: Previous consensus on not changing patent policy (Re:
References to Redphone's "patent")
At 2:11 PM -0800 2/16/09, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
Let's forget the past; I acknowledge we lost that argument then among
those
few who bothered to hum.
Many of us have heard this in various technical working groups when people
who didn't get their way come back later. Such reconsiderations,
particularly on topics of a non-protocol nature, are rarely embraced. We
are humans with limited time and energy and focus.
But are the 1,000 or so emails in recent days from the FSF campaign not a
loud enough hum to recognize that our IPR policy is out of tune?
No, it is a statement that a group of people who are not active in the
IETF want us to spend our time and effort to fix a problem they feel that
they have.
This is not
the first such open source campaign either. IETF needs a more sturdy
process
to deal with IPR issues. Please consider the suggestions now on the
table.
Where? I see no Internet Draft, nor any significant group of people who
have said they are willing to work on the problem. Seriously, if this is a
significant issue for this motivated group of people, they can do some
research and write one (or probably more) Internet Drafts.
The IETF has never been swayed by blitzes of a mailing list asking for us
to do someone else's technical work; we should not be swayed by similar
blitzes asking us to do their policy work. We are, however, amazingly (and
sometime painfully) open to discussing worked-out solutions of either a
technical or policy nature. In this case, "worked-out" means a document
that describes the the current solution, the advantages and disadvantages
of it, a proposal for a new solution, and a transition plan.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
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