Re: [TLS] Proto write-up for TLS exporter

[Martin Rex <Martin.Rex at sap.com>]

Nicolas Williams wrote:
> 
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 04:10:01PM +0200, Badra wrote:
> > May it be possible for the draft's authors to review the related Certicom's
> > patents and conclude whatever they are or aren't related to the document in
> > question?
> 
> Absolutely not.  A document author should _never_ have to do that unless
> they are the owners of (or work for the owners of) the relevant patents.
> Nor, to be clear, should the authors be required to produce such a
> review (e.g., done by their lawyers).

I agree with Nico.  If anyone at all should be asked to do a review
whether the Certicom patent claim covers tls-extractors by accident
or intentionally (independent of its validity), then this would
be the IPR holder, i.e. Certicom themselves.


IMHO the discussion is not very fruitful.

The PRF as described in TLS extractors is so totally similar to
the PRF used in TLS itself over many years that I don't see a
problem of going for the same track, i.e. standards track.


If it helps (and Certicom doesn't want to drop its claim),
how about adding a few words to the document describing the
situation?

Something like:

There is the following IPR disclosure ABC from Company XYZ which
claims to cover technology described in this document (TLS-extractors).
Since the technology has been and still is used in exactly the same
fashion in the base standard (TLS) for many years, the working group
made a straw poll whether it is ok to assume that adding this
technology to an existing implementation is not going to add
more risk to the IPR claim (that does apply to TLS as well).
The working group consensus was "........".



-Martin