Rik van Riel <riel(_at_)surriel(_dot_)com> writes:
The only reasonable restriction I could think of is that you lose the
right to the SPF patents if you sue the SPF patent holder about
another patent related to SPF. Such a mutual termination clause would
provide everybody with a good reason to keep SPF open forever.
I think that type of restriction would actually be sufficient for some
groups or individuals to want to kill off SPF.
Standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, this is just my own personal
understanding.
The reason: it could give a company holding SPF-related patents a lot of
power over everyone. One example of why: other companies would then be
unable to sue or counter-sue (!) such a patent-holding company over any
patent issue related to SPF (which is subject to much interpretation),
no matter how dastardly a thing it was, for fear of losing all rights to
SPF. The patent-holding organization might even be able to sue using
SPF-related patents as long as they sue over things that are not SPF.
Also, IETF policies aren't going to fix this, as I understand them.
If it was a responsible open source non-profit organization holding the
patents and their patent license was otherwise non-revokable (see my
very rough non-lawyerly example license in an earlier message), then I
might not have the concern (as long as licensing was open to everyone,
not just open source).
Daniel
--
Daniel Quinlan
http://www.pathname.com/~quinlan/