Subject: Re: Please oppose patent-encumbered technologies, including draft-housley-tls-authz-extns

From: Ben Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:07:21 +1100

Sam Hartman <[email-masked]> writes:

> I'd appreciate your evidence for both of these claims.  1) That the
> technology is covered by patents.

Whether the technology is covered by a patent, I can't say, as I'm not
a judge in a patent-violation suit.

I claimed that the technology is *encumbered* by a patent, in that
there is a patent claimed on the technology that is at least similar
to the implementation, encumbering the technology and those who would
implement it with the prospect of a very expensive law suit to
determine whether the patent actually covers the technology.

My evidence for that begins here
<URL:http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg45874.html>.

> 2) That those claiming these patents have a history of enforcing.

Perhaps "have a history of" was a poor choice of words — I wrote that
message before reading in detail the discussions here. It is
nevertheless evident from the above that the patent-holders in this
case are working to enforce the patent, such that implementors will
need license from them.

That's quite at odds with promoting a technical standard, even though
it may be labelled "experimental", for implementation by parties
interested in interoperability with the technology.

-- 
 \          "If nothing changes, everything will remain the same."  -- |
  `\                                                       Barne's Law |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney

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From: Ben Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:07:21 +1100

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From: Ben Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:04:09 +1100

Ben Finney <[email-masked]> writes:

> Whether the technology is covered by a patent, I can't say, as I'm
> not a judge in a patent-violation suit.
> 
> to the implementation, encumbering the technology and those who
> would implement it with the prospect of a very expensive law suit to

With the corollary that, if *nobody* had to ever go through anything
to find out whether the technology is covered by the patent — for
example, if the patent holder granted everyone in the world a
royalty-free license to implement the described technology for any
purpose whatsoever without even knowing the patent existed — then the
technology would *not* be encumbered by that patent.

So "is covered by patents" is less relevant to my argument than "is
encumbered by patents".

-- 
 \         "I was arrested today for scalping low numbers at the deli. |
  `\                  Sold a number 3 for 28 bucks."  -- Steven Wright |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney