Subject: MEDIA: Is Microsoft Ready to Assert IP Rights over the Internet?

From: "william(at)elan.net" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 20:11:10 -0800 (PST)

[I have my own comments about all this but they are not for public list, 
 but I'll hint you that while SenderID license may well be resolved soon,
 this may actually make matters worth for opensource internet community
 if you look at the larger perspective of what Microsoft is up to]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1714680,00.asp
 Is Microsoft Ready to Assert IP Rights over the Internet?
 By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
 November 5, 2004 	

 Has Microsoft been trying to retroactively claim IP (intellectual 
 property) rights over many of the Internet's basic protocols? Larry J.
 Blunk, senior engineer for networking research and development at Merit 
 Network Inc., believes that might be the case.

 Blunk expressed these concerns about Microsoft's Royalty Free Protocol 
 License Agreement in a recent note to the IETF's Intellectual Property 
 Rights Working Group. Specifically, Blunk suggested that Microsoft seemed 
 to be claiming IP rights to many vital Internet protocols. And by so 
 doing, "Microsoft is injecting a significant amount of unwarranted 
 uncertainty and doubt regarding non-Microsoft implementations of these 
 protocols," Blunk said. 

 Blunk pointed out that Microsoft is claiming some form of IP rights over 
 "a total of 130 protocols which Microsoft is offering for license."

 Many of the listed protocols are [IETF] RFC [request for comment] 
 documents, including but not limited to the core TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6 
 protocol specifications," he said in his note.

 Some of the RFC protocols that Microsoft asserts that it may have IP 
 rights over, such as the TCP/IP protocols and the DNS (Domain Name 
 System), form the very bedrock of the Internet's network infrastructure.

 "Microsoft does not specify how this list of protocols was derived and to 
 what extent they have investigated their possible rights holdings over 
 these protocols," Blunk said. "The list appears to be a near but not 
 completely exhaustive list of public protocols implemented in Microsoft 
 product"

 It is quite likely that an individual or organization would be intimidated 
 into signing the license agreement simply due to Microsoft's vast 
 financial and legal resources," he said

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041107154122603
 ...
 Meanwhile, Microsoft is quietly moving forward with its patent plans. 
 News.com has a fascinating article that quotes a spokesman as saying that 
 they are seeking to enter into cross-licensing deals with the top 30 
 technology companies, so that they can have access to the patents they are 
 most interested in and can offer their customers indemnification from 
 patent infringement lawsuits. How charming. A little club. The "We Are 
 The Only Ones Allowed to Write Software Any More"
 ...
 Speaking of anticompetitive moves, by now you have seen the eWeek report 
 on Microsoft's Royalty Free Protocol License Agreement on Internet 
 protocols and the Larry Blunk email that started it all. Larry Rosen has 
 noted that this license appears to be like the Sender ID license, which 
 means that the obvious remedy is for standards bodies to stand firm 
 against this license. 

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&selm=2Z7Tb-70A-9%40gated-at.bofh.it
...
I also briefly met with Ryan Hamlin, the GM of Microsoft's Safety
Technology & Strategy group, and he's interested in attempting a second
try at the patent license negotiation between us (well, Larry Rosen) and
a more senior attorney at Microsoft.  So, it may not be entirely
hopeless that Sender ID be entirely usable by open source.
-- 
Daniel Quinlan                   ApacheCon! 13-17 November (3 SpamAssassin
http://www.pathname.com/~quinlan/  http://www.apachecon.com/  sessions & more)