Subject: Re: IPR at IETF 54

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 07:12:50 -0600 (MDT)

> From: [email-masked]

> Patents *in and of themselves* are not a Bad Thing. As far as the IETF goes,
> the problem only arises when the patent is used to enforce a restrictive
> licensing policy.
>
>Can anybody think of a reason the IETF should object to patented tech *per se*,
>as opposed to objecting to *hard-to-license* patented tech (the latter I think
> we have consensus as being a Bad Thing)...

In real life, every patent that is enforced is hard-to-license.  Every
patent that is not ignored by everyone including the holder has a
restrictive licensing policy, official IETF, IEEE, and other dogma
notwithstanding.  Any sort of real patent licensing requires dealing
with lawyers, negotiations, and the rest of that very painful, incredibly
slow, and cripplingly expensive show.  The phrase "non-restrictive
patent licensing policy" is an oxymoron.  The entire and only point of
a patent is to restrict that other people can do.  At best, you can
have a "take equal money from anyone patent licensing policy."

In still other words, don't you remember the years of pain
Motorola/Codec caused PPP with those two bogus patents?

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 09:41:12 -0400

> Motorola/Codec caused PPP with those two bogus patents?

I guess what I was asking was how the IETF would feel about an organization
grabbing a patent on an algorithm and using it the same way the GNU crew
uses copyright on source code.  (Remember - the GNU copyright only works
for *code* - since algorithms can be (at least in the US) patented but not
copyrighted, you'd have to do a similar stunt with a patent).

(And yes, this would be a case of "the Good Guys file a bull-manure patent
to pre-empt the Evil Guys from filing a bull-manure patent" - but until the
Patent Office gets their act together we're stuck with borked software patents
that are invalid due to prior art, etc....)

/Valdis