THE WG should probably look at this.But it is hard to know whether this is worse than typical. And it does not appear to be a matter of "expense."
The terms Juniper states are:1) If you sue them, they reserve the right to sue you over infringing this patent 2) If there is something patented that is not "necessary for compliance with the standard" then they reserve the right to assert / license / control that.
Based on this, the question is not one of expense, but one of applicability.Point 1 is clearly not a a problem or cost for the free community, and is a widely accepted condition in the commercial community. We have accepted many standards track documents with defensive patent claims on them.
Point 2 is where the applicability issue comes in. I have seen lawyers argue that as long as there is some context way of implementing the spec that can be implemented without the claim they are asserting, then the claim is not "necessary for compliance with the specification. In that case, the reservation is very dangerous. Conversely, it is fairly reasonable for a company to say that if you as a commercial implementor are doing something way beyond what the spec describes, and their patent describes that, then they can come after you. That is what the game is about. (I say "fairly reasonable" to stay out of the protracted argument about what corporate patent policies should be.)
(Of course, this is even harder to evaluate relative to filed but not yet granted patents, which can change before granting.)
Yours, Joel John Leslie wrote:
Thomas Narten <narten at us.ibm.com> wrote:FWIW, I believe that this document cannot and should not be advanced unless the WG explicitly goes on record as stating that even with the recent IPR disclosure, they still want to publish as a PS.I wouldn't demand quite that much, but I must urge the IESG not to approve it _today_. The IPR disclosure clearly indicates that royalties might me charged; and I am unable to find the patent application on the patent office site.Silence cannot be interpreted as approval.I agree. We have typically been dominated by corporations that will not find RAND to be a problem, but there are at least two "free" implementations of BGP in use that would be unable to pay royalties. If the WG chooses to say that the benefit exceeds that expense, we need to say so clearly and publicly. -- John Leslie <john at jlc.net> _______________________________________________ Idr mailing list Idr at ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/idr