John,
I do not speak for SRI, however I spoke with Richard Ogier on this release a while back. My understanding is that there are no issues. The Speedcom software is older stuff and the exclusive agreement does not cover the current protocol.
Cheers,
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: John Tully [mailto:tully@mt.lv]
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 11:04 PM
To: manet@ietf.org
Cc: ogier@erg.sri.com; Fred Baker
Subject: [manet] SRI patent issuce
Hello,
I have been following the patent issue on SRI's TBRPF.
Speedcom Wireless has announced that it has an exclusive license to
implement SRI's "Packet Hop" which I understand is the same as TBRPF. The
license is for fixed wireless networks. This action makes it appear that
it could be impossible for them to comply with the statements they have
made in their draft RFC.
Maybe someone from their side can clear this up.
John
From SEC filing:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1014343/000102140802006934/0001021408-02-006934.txt
============================ In January 2001, SPEEDCOM acquired worldwide
rights for six years to PacketHop(TM), a wireless routing software
developed by SRI International (SRI). Under the terms of the agreement,
SPEEDCOM obtains rights to SRI's PacketHop(TM) technology in the fixed
wireless infrastructure market for the primary frequencies below 6 GHz. Per
the agreement, SRI International received a total of 325,000 shares of
common stock of SPEEDCOM that was issued in four traunches. Each traunch
was measured on the specific date that the stock was issued on. As of March
31, 2002, the value of these shares at the date of grant is classified in
Intellectual property on the balance sheet. SPEEDCOM also has paid $360,000
in cash, included in Intellectual property on the balance sheet, which is
being amortized over six years. Per the terms of the agreement, SRI may
terminate the exclusive period (18 months) by providing written notice of
such termination unless by such time SPEEDCOM has successfully closed a
liquid event where SRI had the opportunity to obtain net proceeds of at
least $5,000,000. Due to the fact that such an event has not occurred, it
is expected that SPEEDCOM will lose its exclusive rights to PacketHop(TM)
in July 2002, but will retain its perpetual license agreement. SPEEDCOM has
evaluated this long-lived asset for impairment by comparing the discounted
expected future cash flows to its carrying amount. The undiscounted
expected future cash flows are more than the carrying value of the asset,
so an impairment loss has not been recognized.
---------------------------------------------------------
At 10:42 AM 5/2/2002 -0700, ogier@erg.sri.com wrote:
Fred,
> My observation is my own, nobody else's, but it comes from someone
> who has been watching the IETF for a *long* time. If you want to
> guarantee a > scramble, say the word "patent", and if you want to
> guarantee that the IETF > will proceed in a direction only under
> duress, apply for one.
Let me quote a sentence from "A Novice's Guide to the IETF"
http://www.imc.org/novice-ietf.html
"Sometimes, the patent holder is generous and promises to give all
implementors of a standard a royalty-free license to the patent,
thereby making it almost as easy to implement as it would have been
if no patent existed."
That is exactly what SRI is doing. Our IPR statement contains the
following sentence: "If SRI's submission (or portions thereof) is
accepted and becomes part of the IETF standard, then SRI will grant
any party a royalty-free license under such patents for both
commercial and non-commercial uses, to the extent necessary for
compliance with the standard."
Also note that ISATAP (in the NGTRANS WG) has exactly the same IPR
statement as TBRPF: http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/ISI-NGTRANS.txt
This issue has been discussed previously on this list, e.g., see
Ken Peirce's message dated 12/13/01. Also, in a recent email from
Ken to you (Ken, you can chime in if you want), he pointed out that
the patent (if awarded) is actually a *bonus* to TBRPF implementors,
since SRI will give all implementors a royalty-free license if
TBRPF becomes a standard. As Ken noted (and our lawyer agrees),
in addition to guaranteeing that TBRPF will be unencumbered, it also
provides some protection to TBRPF implementors from 3rd party
infringement lawsuits.
In your response to Ken, you stated that it is very unlikely that our
lawyers will let us concede our rights to TBPRF. This is not true.
In fact our lawyers are the ones who wrote the IPR statement.
Our lawyers are currently updating the IPR statement to clarify that
anyone can implement TBRPF for non-commercial research purposes while
TBRPF is being considered by the IETF, as requested by Joe Macker.
(The updated statement will be submitted to the IETF in a few days.)
Now, if OLSR and TBRPF turn out to be equally good protocols for
proactive routing in MANETs, then it would make sense to select the
one that has no IPRs. But *so far*, TBRPF has outperformed OLSR
significantly in our simulations (and has other advantages that
I have previously discussed). These simulations are based
on the OLSR code that is available from the INRIA web site, which
has been outdated for several months (according to Clausen's
message dated 11/29/01), so I hope that newer OLSR code will
be available soon.
Richard
P.S. For reference, here is the excerpt from
draft-baker-manet-review-01.txt that I think is unfair:
"SRI has aggressively marketed TBRPF and
its IPRs to the working group. The fact that a patent has been
applied for on certain aspects is, however, severely limiting
politically. If there is any way in which the IETF is absolutely
predictable, it is that when confronted with a choice between a
proposal encumbered with IPR issues and an unencumbered proposal, it
will choose the unencumbered one."
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