On Feb 12, 2009, at 9:30 AM, John Leslie wrote:
The IPR disclosure clearly indicates that royalties might me charged;
There was an IPR disclosure that did say that. It's been retracted (and apologized for, but I'll do so again here and now on behalf of my employer: sorry!). The correct and current disclosure is the usual royalty-free, non-assert version. See https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1088/ and http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/juniper-ipr-draft-ietf-idr-flow-spec-03.txt for corroboration.
(I assume you were referring to the first, erroneous disclosure. If you're referring to the non-assert or "not necessary for compliance" clauses, you'll find those in most IPR disclosures that have ever been made to the IETF by any company. IMO you can't ask for better than that without simply insisting that the IETF eschew IPR-encumbered standards completely. But that ship sailed a long time ago and is completely impractical besides.)
and I am unable to find the patent application on the patent office site.
The issued patent can be found easily. As for the applications, I've never had much luck with searching for them either in this case or any other. Seems like a USPTO issue though, not an IETF issue.
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.
Again, please note that the correct disclosure is royalty-free (though with the usual non-assert caveat, which probably is even less likely than usual to be invoked with respect to an open-source implementation).
--John