Subject: RE: The licensing issue

From: "Harry Katz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 17:43:14 -0700

On Wednesday, July 14, 2004 5:22 PM, Mark Lentczner wrote
 
> All -
> 
> Regarding the issues of licensing and intellectual property:
> 
> 1) It has been my understanding that any technology that 
> Microsoft has claims to would be made available with zero 
> royalty licensing terms that are compatible with open source 
> development and distribution including GNU licenses and OSF 
> approved licenses.  If this is the case and the license bears 
> it out, then I have no objections to such an arrangement.  If 
> this is not the case, I am confident Microsoft will clarify 
> their intentions.
> 
> 2) Since the IPR disclosure filed by Microsoft for the 
> Caller-ID draft doesn't indicate what portion of the draft is 
> covered (section V(C) is blank), and since only parts of that 
> draft have been incorporated into the marid-core draft, I 
> would like to ask that Microsoft clarify which portions of 
> the marid-core they have patents pending for.
> 
> 	- Mark
> 
> Mark Lentczner
> http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/
> [email-masked]
> 

A perfectly reasonable request.  I'm working with our attorneys now to
draft an answer.

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 08:04:32 -0700

> * to simply donate the IP to the public domain, with the
> rational and implications being explained in an FAQ?

I hope not, that would be sub-optimal. You can ask RMS on this
and you will get the same response.

I have never EVER experienced a real licensing issue when the
holder of the IP announced that it existed at the start of the WG.
The real problem here is not declared IP, its patent trolls.

There is no real cure for patent trolls, the USPTO would 
probably grant a patent for SPF if someone sent in an application
today, all it takes is a small amount of perjury that is not going
to be prosecuted.

The reason that a lot of companies (including VeriSign) have started
aggressively patenting is to 1) block other claims and 2) have
collateral against other claims.

What we really want here is a patent grant under the longstanding
terms originaly proposed by HP, i.e. anyone can use the IP to
implement the spec provided that they don't make a claim against
the IP holder wrt other necessary IP.

Now even that is not perfect, but nobody has a scheme that can
deal with a patent troll who is only interested in exploitation.

The requirement for GNU licensed code is actually the weakest of
the requirements we need to meet here. If you are a commercial 
software vendor you need a lot more flexibility.

	Phill