Re: When is using patented technology appropriate?

[Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu>]

Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> Keith Moore wrote:
>   
>> For several reasons, it is difficult to imagine an IETF-wide procedure
>> that allows the existence of a patent to trump other considerations of
>> protocol feasibility and deployability:
>>     
>
> Who suggested otherwise? It is not the existence of the patent that matters,
> but its unavailability under license terms that allow implementation in
> *any* software.
>   
_and_ its validity, _and_ its applicability, both of which can be
subjective and difficult to determine conclusively without long delays
and excessive expense.   so we have to make judgments.  and by "we" I
mean individuals participating in IETF, not IETF itself.
> The more feasible and deployable the protocol, the more important will be
> FOSS implementations. 
>   
only relative to other protocols in the same space.

granted that patents are the bane of any open standards-making
organization, because patents do exactly the opposite of what open
standards do.  at the same time, we can't let FUD about patents become a
denial of service attack to IETF efforts.

Keith


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