Re: [dane] AD review of draft-ietf-dane-smime-14

[Paul Wouters <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2017, Stephen Farrell wrote:

> However, before I start IETF LC I would like to be
> sure that the WG are ok with the IPR declaration [1]
> filed in 2014 that said "Licensing Declaration to
> be Provided Later." I think 2017 is "later" enough
> to ask whether that the WG (via the chairs) explicitly
> declare that they are ok that this has yet to be
> clarified.

> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/2468/

The patent is dated 11-27-2013.

The first openpgpkey draft is dated July 15, 2013.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wouters-dane-openpgp-00

The patent is also completely unrelated to email, and instead mumbles
about using DNSSEC to publish policy for public consumption.

Fortunately, we have the whole origin of DNSSEC and the FreeS/WAN team
with John Gilmore and Hugh Daniel predating that idea to about 1995 and
earlier. In fact, half the people working on DNSSEC 25 years ago had as
_goal_ to use DNSSEC as a PKI to publish policy and I'm sure the heated
namedroppers archive will show that this patent application is absolute
bullshit and Verisign and the authors should be ashamed of such lame
attempts at "inventing".

And the worst is, they weren't even the first to do this. There are
also the patents of Thierry Moreau of Connotech who threatened me
back in 2007 with lawsuits when he warned IETF he had similar broad
patents of having invented using DNSSEC for something non-DNS.

So yeah, I think the WG can safely ignore this nonsense, and if anyone
is ever approached by Verisign for illegal use of their patent, do
contact me to provide you with an expert witness statement.

Paul