RE: When is using patented technology appropriate?

["Lawrence Rosen" <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>]

Steven Bellovin wrote:
> Right.  Any IPR policy has to acknowledge the fact that relevant
> patents can be owned by non-troll non-participants.  (Too many
> negatives there -- what I'm saying is that IETFers don't know of all
> patents in the space, and there are real patent owners who care about
> their patents, even though they aren't trolls.)

I agree, but I suggest that our new IPR policy ought to set expectations for
how we deal procedurally with such outside encumbrances when discovered. The
defensive termination provision in most contributors' IETF patent grants can
also help to protect our specifications from trolls and some third-party
patent owners, depending upon how those grants are worded.

/Larry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven M. Bellovin [mailto:smb at cs.columbia.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:46 PM
> To: Brian E Carpenter
> Cc: Simon Josefsson; Sam Hartman; ietf at ietf.org
> Subject: Re: When is using patented technology appropriate?
> 
> On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:15:55 +1300
> Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On 2007-10-25 04:30, Sam Hartman wrote:
> >
> > ...
> > >     Simon> If you replace IBM with 'A Patent Troll', do you think
> > >     Simon> the same holds?  > > I think that such behavior should
> > >     Simon> be presumed not to be a patent
> > > troll.  Patent trolls are not known forpromising to give away
> > > royalty-free licenses.
> >
> > They are also, in general, known for *not* particpating in
> > the standards process, precisely to avoid falling under
> > patent disclosure requirements. As far as non-participants
> > are concerned, nothing in our rules matters.
> >
> Right.  Any IPR policy has to acknowledge the fact that relevant
> patents can be owned by non-troll non-participants.  (Too many
> negatives there -- what I'm saying is that IETFers don't know of all
> patents in the space, and there are real patent owners who care about
> their patents, even though they aren't trolls.)
> 
> 
> 		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
> 
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