Re: [TLS] Document Action: 'TLS Elliptic Curve Cipher Suites with

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb at cs.columbia.edu>]

On Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:15:17 +0200
Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org> wrote:

> Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman at vpnc.org> writes:
> 
> > At 4:37 PM -0400 7/1/08, Richard M Stallman wrote:
> >>All that is true, but doesn't the IETF have ways to press the big
> >>companies to say whether they have any patents over a proposed
> >>standard?
> >
> > No.
> 
> That is a rather terse answer.
> 
> The IETF has RFC 3979, in particular section 6.1, which says that IETF
> participants must file a disclosure when he knows about his own
> patents in IETF contributions, and is encouraged to file a disclosure
> for patents owned by others.  That count as a "yes" answer to this
> question for me.
> 
> To clarify, the IETF has RFC 3979 as the instrument to pressure big
> companies to file these notifications, through the individuals who
> participate in the IETF.
> 
> Could you elaborate on why you believe "no" is the correct answer?
> 
Simon, 3979 only constrains players who choose to participate in the
IETF.  If they do not participate -- worse yet, if they choose not to
participate with the intention of using submarine patents -- there's
nothing the IETF can do.  In fact, I'm not convinced that even
conceptually there's anything the IETF could do against
non-participants, since no license is needed to implement an IETF
protocol.  How could there be, even in theory, if the RFCs are to
remain open and freely redistributable?  I don't think an
implementation would count as a derivative work under copyright law.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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