Re: [dhcwg] IPR statement related to draft-ietf-dhc-subscriber-id-X.txt

> From: Kim Kinnear <kkinnear@cisco.com>

> ...
> And, frankly, folks, it is not a big deal.  Nobody is dumb enough
> to charge royalties.  Don't be naive.  If any company *made* it a
> big deal by charging $$, all of the goodwill they get from their
> customers for working with the IETF would be out the window.  It
> would be a major black eye from a marketing standpoint.  Why
> would anyone work with the IETF at all?  For the good of mankind?
> Well, sure, that's why we do it -- but why does my boss let me?
> Because it *is* good for the industry and because our customers
> know it and our customers appreciate standards based solutions.

  - "Reasonable" terms are in the eye of the beholder.  

  - making money from license fees is not the only reason to get a
     patent.  Preventing other implementations is at least as common a
     reason for filing as fees.  The IP vultures that pick over the bones
     of dead companies are most likely to try to make money from fees.

  - goodwill from customers through working with the IETF doesn't
     increase the price of the stock or ship product.

  - organizations have varying motives for paying their employees
     to participate in the IETF.  Getting IETF gold stars is rarely a
     major concern.

> Anyone who would invest time with the IETF and then blow it all
> away by charging royalty $$ would deserve the black eye they'd
> get from it.   This isn't a big deal, and I don't know why people
> are trying to make it so.  Talk to a marketing person about it,
> why don't you.

I have no idea whether the technical issue in this case is a big deal.
It does seem to me that the precedent proposed of demanding free except
for defensive licenses differs from the official IETF stance after the
earliest IEST/IETF errors, but it is attractive.  "Reasonable and
non-discriminatory" has means one thing to an outfit trying some
embracing and extending but something else to commercial competitors 
as well as people writing open source.

> I'm not saying that someone won't file a patent and hold us all
> up about it for big $$$ -- I'm saying that they won't work with
> the IETF to any great degree and then do that.

To avoid opening old, painful, lifethreatening (to the IETF), and
poorly healed wounds, let's not talk in public about the IETF's and
IESG's past "IP" mistakes and the organizations that did just what
you say none would do.  If you can't name any of the cases I'm
thinking about, please ask around in private--but not me.

Vernon Schryver    vjs@rhyolite.com

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