Subject: [manet] SRI patent issuce

From: John Tully <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:03:32 +0300

Hello,

I have been following the patent issue on SRI's TBRPF.

Speedcom Wireless has announced that it has an exclusive license to 
implement SRI's "Packet Hop" which I understand is the same as TBRPF.  The 
license is for fixed wireless networks.  This action makes it appear that 
it could be impossible for them to comply with the statements they have 
made in their draft RFC.

Maybe someone from their side can clear this up.

John

 From SEC filing:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1014343/000102140802006934/0001021408-02-006934.txt
============================ In January 2001, SPEEDCOM acquired worldwide 
rights for six years to PacketHop(TM), a wireless routing software 
developed by SRI International (SRI). Under the terms of the agreement, 
SPEEDCOM obtains rights to SRI's PacketHop(TM) technology in the fixed 
wireless infrastructure market for the primary frequencies below 6 GHz. Per 
the agreement, SRI International received a total of 325,000 shares of 
common stock of SPEEDCOM that was issued in four traunches. Each traunch 
was measured on the specific date that the stock was issued on. As of March 
31, 2002, the value of these shares at the date of grant is classified in 
Intellectual property on the balance sheet. SPEEDCOM also has paid $360,000 
in cash, included in Intellectual property on the balance sheet, which is 
being amortized over six years. Per the terms of the agreement, SRI may 
terminate the exclusive period (18 months) by providing written notice of 
such termination unless by such time SPEEDCOM has successfully closed a 
liquid event where SRI had the opportunity to obtain net proceeds of at 
least $5,000,000. Due to the fact that such an event has not occurred, it 
is expected that SPEEDCOM will lose its exclusive rights to PacketHop(TM) 
in July 2002, but will retain its perpetual license agreement. SPEEDCOM has 
evaluated this long-lived asset for impairment by comparing the discounted 
expected future cash flows to its carrying amount. The undiscounted 
expected future cash flows are more than the carrying value of the asset, 
so an impairment loss has not been recognized.

---------------------------------------------------------
At 10:42 AM 5/2/2002 -0700, [email-masked] wrote:

Fred,

 > My observation is my own, nobody else's, but it comes from someone
 > who has been watching the IETF for a *long* time. If you want to
 > guarantee a > scramble, say the word "patent", and if you want to
 > guarantee that the IETF > will proceed in a direction only under
 > duress, apply for one.

Let me quote a sentence from "A Novice's Guide to the IETF"
http://www.imc.org/novice-ietf.html

"Sometimes, the patent holder is generous and promises to give all
implementors of a standard a royalty-free license to the patent,
thereby making it almost as easy to implement as it would have been
if no patent existed."

That is exactly what SRI is doing. Our IPR statement contains the
following sentence: "If SRI's submission (or portions thereof) is
accepted and becomes part of the IETF standard, then SRI will grant
any party a royalty-free license under such patents for both
commercial and non-commercial uses, to the extent necessary for
compliance with the standard."

Also note that ISATAP (in the NGTRANS WG) has exactly the same IPR
statement as TBRPF: http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/ISI-NGTRANS.txt

This issue has been discussed previously on this list, e.g., see
Ken Peirce's message dated 12/13/01.  Also, in a recent email from
Ken to you (Ken, you can chime in if you want), he pointed out that
the patent (if awarded) is actually a *bonus* to TBRPF implementors,
since SRI will give all implementors a royalty-free license if
TBRPF becomes a standard.  As Ken noted (and our lawyer agrees),
in addition to guaranteeing that TBRPF will be unencumbered, it also
provides some protection to TBRPF implementors from 3rd party
infringement lawsuits.

In your response to Ken, you stated that it is very unlikely that our
lawyers will let us concede our rights to TBPRF.  This is not true.
In fact our lawyers are the ones who wrote the IPR statement.

Our lawyers are currently updating the IPR statement to clarify that
anyone can implement TBRPF for non-commercial research purposes while
TBRPF is being considered by the IETF, as requested by Joe Macker.
(The updated statement will be submitted to the IETF in a few days.)

Now, if OLSR and TBRPF turn out to be equally good protocols for
proactive routing in MANETs, then it would make sense to select the
one that has no IPRs.  But *so far*, TBRPF has outperformed OLSR
significantly in our simulations (and has other advantages that
I have previously discussed).  These simulations are based
on the OLSR code that is available from the INRIA web site, which
has been outdated for several months (according to Clausen's
message dated 11/29/01), so I hope that newer OLSR code will
be available soon.

Richard

P.S. For reference, here is the excerpt from
draft-baker-manet-review-01.txt that I think is unfair:

   "SRI has aggressively marketed TBRPF and
   its IPRs to the working group.  The fact that a patent has been
   applied for on certain aspects is, however, severely limiting
   politically.  If there is any way in which the IETF is absolutely
   predictable, it is that when confronted with a choice between a
   proposal encumbered with IPR issues and an unencumbered proposal, it
   will choose the unencumbered one."

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 13:35:48 -0700

> Maybe someone from their side can clear this up.

John,

SRI's agreement with Speedcom is not in conflict with any SRI submissions 
to date nor is it in conflict with the following IPR statement for TBRPF, 
which our lawyer has submitted to the IETF Secretariat, and which I 
discussed in a previous post.  Essentially, it says that anyone can use 
TBRPF for free if it becomes a standard. 

Richard 

SRI IPR Statement for 'draft-ietf-manet-tbrpf-05.txt':
*****************************************************
SRI International has filed one or more patents protecting the
inventions described in this submission (the "Patents").  If SRI's
submission, or material portions thereof, is accepted and becomes part
of the IETF standard (the "Standard"), then SRI will grant any entity
wishing to practice the Standard a non-exclusive, royalty-free license
under the Patents to the extent, but only to the extent, that such
license is required to implement (a) mandatory elements of the Standard;
or (b) elements of SRI's submission that are explicitly specified (and
not merely incorporated by reference) in the Standard.

Use of any elements of SRI's submission that are neither required in
order to implement the Standard nor explicitly specified in the Standard
will require an additional license from SRI under terms to be negotiated
between the parties.

While the protocol disclosed in SRI's submission is being evaluated by
the IETF, whether on the standards track or otherwise, SRI will and
hereby does grant any party a license to utilize, test and evaluate such
protocol solely for non-commercial, research purposes.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 13:35:48 -0700

John,

Richard