> Paul Wouters <mailto:p...@nohats.ca> > Saturday, February 28, 2015 1:30 PM > ... > Trying to get a pay raise at the expense of the IETF community is not > behaviour I would want to condone.
that sounds judgemental, even if passively. many people we both respect have their names on handfuls of patents. it's how those patents are used that should concern us. as heinlein wrote, "an armed society is a polite society." > > ... > Does the "right thing" include dropping patents we point out are clearly > marred by prior art? no. > Does the "right thing" include ensuring common > sense protocol extensions or updates are available to the entire > community royalty free? usually. > The IPR disclosure allows them to state exactly > what their intend is long before they are rewarded with a patent. and yet, if i were an employee or officer of verisign, i could not even speculate as to those matters; if you're expecting anyone who knows anything to say anything here, then you're going to be disappointed. > > ... > The recent track record of Verisign actually is not good. They are > flailing patent applications. > > Let's pick https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1924/ which is now over 2 > years old and is still waiting for an update on their intended license > conditions. if you have a specific complaint, take it to the WG chairs, who can follow the IETF IPR process to get that statement amended or retracted. if the IETF policy isn't to your liking, you know what to do about that, also. in no case is kvetching about it here going to do more good than harm. > > My company also financially encourages patents for their (defensive) > portfolio. I have not filed any patents and have no desire to do > so. While I did point out that "prior art" published in an RFC serves > a similar goal to a "defensive patent", I haven't convinced them yet to > hand out financial rewards for RFCs s I've written. That still does not > cause me to write patents for obvious software "inventions" that we > would like to see attain broad deployment for the betterment of the > internet. damn. damn! write the patents! then you'll have standing within $dayjob to argue for how they ought to be licensed. and would give $dayjob a seat at the table whenever "patent reform" is being workshopped. here's a closely related story. dnssec key management has been the subject of much debate. one unaffiliated researcher designed a complete system which was beautiful and practical, and he wrote a couple of internet drafts that described it, which were very easy to read, very well written. and, he patented the approach. i (speaking at that time for ISC) informed the DNSEXT community that BIND would not implement an ietf standard that required royalties be paid to an IPR holder by our commercial users, and that if they wanted to adopt this encumbered approach, they would be building DNSSEC without BIND's help. others spoke up similarly. i asked the patent holder to reconsider, and to license his work in a way that would make it relevant, and he said "no." i pointed out that he'd make zero dollars either way, and he said "no." i asked him why he was willing to waste his time and scorch the earth creating such fine technology that had absolutely no future. he said "because verisign is making a lot of money from DNS, and they should have to pay for stuff like this." i walked away, sure that i should not say what came next. but if i were verisign living in that world i would have a large defensive patent portfolio to protect the interests of my shareholders, my employees and their families, and my customers. your mileage may vary, but please reconsider any moral judgement that may come into your heart, because this is a very nuanced situation and is not subject to black/white interpretations. -- Paul Vixie
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