Subject: problems with patents: the IDN example from RFC3669

From: wayne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 21:09:47 -0500

The International Domain Name (IDN) working group is cited as an
example in RFC3669.  Yesterday, I was poking around a little bit and I
read some of the discussion on the IDN mailing list about the patent
issue.  Boy, things sure are different between the IDN WG and the
MARID WG.

Check out the following messages:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email-masked]/msg00659.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email-masked]/msg00764.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email-masked]/msg00758.html

Some choice quotes:

"The IETF has always strongly favored completely unencumbered 
technology over any technology for which there are even mild 
licensing restrictions."  -- Paul Hoffman

"The WALID patent does not exist in a vacuum. The IDN Working Group 
has options that would not infringe on the WALID patent. The fact 
that all of these options are worse than the one currently favored 
does not affect the IETF's views on the patent. As long as there is 
any option that is unencumbered, a protocol that would infringe on 
the WALID patent will probably not be considered unless WALID signs 
an IPR statement giving full, free, and unencumbered access to the 
technology. This would involve a significant change to the WALID IPR 
statement on file with the IETF Secretariat." -- Paul Hooffman

"Any solution which is possible to implement might be better than one which
is not possible to implement for various reasons, and licensing being one
of them." -- Patrik Fältström

The co-chairs publicly pushed for closure on the "Walid patent mess":

"As you know, time is the essence.  We do feel an urgent need to have
another statement from Walid that it either:
- keeps with the current IP statement, which is unsatisfactory for the
working group
- have a new IP statement that the working group will find acceptable to
promote the documents to the RFC level."
  -- Marc Blanchet, co-chair of IETF idn wg.
  -- James Seng, co-chair of IETF idn wg.

Now, I didn't read the whole IDN archive.  I mostly read stuff that
popped up in my google searches.  Still, this some of these quotes a
*VERY* different than anything expressed by the people running this
working group.

-wayne