Subject: Re: patents?

From: "William H. Geiger III" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 13:08:35 -0500

In <[email-masked]>, on 05/31/00 
   at 06:24 PM, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> said:

>At 04:46 PM 5/31/00 -0700, Rodney Thayer wrote:
>>Being as no evil lawyers from NAI or elsewhere have swooped down on this
>>list or on the IETF I'd say it's safe for now.
>>
>>At 03:05 PM 5/31/00 -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>>>Probably just standard boilerplate. They are just putting you on notice
>>>that by publishing their source code they are not giving up any rights
>>>that the may hold on the code.

>You are both being far too optimistic.  While it is possible that you are
> correct, it is equally possible -- and many would say more likely --
>that  patents are, in fact, held or being prosecuted.

>The IETF has had some patents emerge very late in the process, so the 
>concern is not academic.

Well Dave I know several of the people in the PGP group at NAI and I don't
think that they would allow something like this.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III      http://www.openpgp.net  
Geiger Consulting    

Data Security & Cryptology Consulting
Programming, Networking, Analysis
 
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---------------------------------------------------------------

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 21:28:13 -0700

>think that they would allow something like this.

And, of course, I was not trying to claim that NAI has any plans or would 
take such action.  For that matter the entire history of PGP leads to the 
expectation that no such patent action would be taken.

However the question was about possibilities and implications, particularly 
with respect to the import of being late in the standards process.

That is, the important piece of information is that there is nothing that 
*forces* NAI (or any other participant) to disclose patent intent, and 
there is already some precedent (small pseudo-legal pun intended) for 
late-stage surfacing.

d/

=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker  <[email-masked]>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464
675 Spruce Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA

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From: Rodney Thayer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 12:35:17 -0700

Yes, but after the RFC has a number and after there is widespread
common use of a technology goes over into the "they never enforced their
patent" area.

I mostly said what I said to shake any stealth lawyers out of the trees,
which seems to not have happened.

One can never stop scanning for submarine patents.  they pop at the
most annoying times...

At 05:24 PM 5/31/00 -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
>correct, it is equally possible -- and many would say more likely -- that 
>patents are, in fact, held or being prosecuted.
>