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

[Paul Wouters <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, 8 Feb 2017, John Levine wrote:

> It's not a patent, it's a patent application, and if you read the
> first page of the application, it claims priority from a provisional
> application dated March 15, 2013, which is earlier than July.

https://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg00272.html

Nov 2012.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-fanf-dane-mua-00

June 27, 2012.

> You might want to reread the application.  If you say that a S/MIME
> certificate expresses policies, which is not much of a stretch in
> patent-ese, then this applies directly to publishing a bunch of DNSSEC
> signed certificates.

We seem to agree the patent application is not specific to email and
thus only affects the smime draft based on its very generic concept.

> I agree that the application is pretty weak, and there is probably
> lots of prior art, but I'd also note that an e-mail message from long
> ago saying that one wanted to do something is not necessarily prior
> art if you can't show that someone actually did it.  I would also note
> that it is an application, not a patent, and many, perhaps most,
> applications never turn into patents.  But it's definitely relevant.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ipseckey-rr-00

Published March 30, 2003

Although the implementation predates even that:

http://www.freeswan.org/oldnews.html

2001/06/22

     We would like to announce that the Linux FreeS/WAN project has now
     released version 1.91 of our IPSEC system.

      The BIG news for the 1.91 release is that you can now begin to use
      Opportunistic Encryption!

> FYI, there are also patent applications pending in Europe and China.

Still not impressed. This whole exercise is a waste of everyone's time
and Verisign should just put a stop to it.

Paul