Many patents are filed for defensive reasons. Ie. If I don't patent it,
then someone else will, and then I won't be able to use the idea I came
up with. The other defensive reason is so that if company A tries to
sue company B for infringing patents, then company B can threaten to sue
company A back - and the end result of the mutual assured destruction is
that no one ends up suing anyone else. In other words, patents can
actually reduce the number of law suits out there. In many cases,
patents are filed long before the technology is standardized - and, if
disclosed properly through the IETF process, can be weighed when
determining whether to adopt a standard. In some cases, the IETF may
choose to adopt a patent-encumbered standard simply because it's
technically superior to other options - and because the encumberence is
not judged to be too much of a barrier to adoption. One great way to
find out if the patent is too much of a barrier would be to label the
technology as "Experimental" with the experiment being whether anybody
would implement it given the patent encumberence, and if enough people
can implement it, striking the right deals, then the technology can move
onto the standards track.
- Wes
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of
Richard Stallman
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:38 PM
To: Nicolas Williams
Cc: tls(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; dean(_at_)av8(_dot_)com;
ietf-honest(_at_)lists(_dot_)iadl(_dot_)org;
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: [TLS] Last Call: draft-ietf-tls-extractor (Keying
MaterialExporters for Transport Layer Security (TLS)) to Proposed
Standard
The operative word here is uncertainty. A patent-holder creates
uncertainty. How should an SDO respond? I'm not sure. I'm only
sure
that I don't like getting DoSed, either into dropping a standard or
into
not implementing it for fear of infringing.
That's the nature of software patents: each one denies people the
freedom to write and run certain kinds of software. This is why we must
abolish software patents.
Until we succeed in doing that, we can resist in certain ways. One of
them is to refuse to establish standards that encourage their use.
Generally speaking, standards are useful, because they enable people to
converge what they are doing. But that ceases to be true when the use
of the standard is patented. It is better to have no standard than have
a standard that invites people into danger.
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