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

On Feb 6, 2004, at 7:29 AM, Thomas Narten wrote:
> But I at least would like to understand why Ted (and others?)  believe
> that the above terms should be required before advancing this
> document, when other DHC documents also with IPR terms that are not
> "free" have apparently not raised a similar concern.

The Motorola patent on the relay agent information option has the IPR 
terms I am asking for.   The reason it has those terms is because I 
raised a big fuss when Motorola announced that they'd patented it, for 
the very obvious reason that I'd been involved in developing the RAIO 
and was upset that Motorola had patented my work.

In the case of the Motorola patent on DHCP as a whole, whatever that 
is, the WG was never, as far as I can recall, notified that Motorola 
had made this claim.   In the case of the Cisco patent on DHCP as a 
whole, again, the WG was never notified of this claim.   Had the WG 
been notified of either of these claims, I can assure you that I would 
have kicked up a fuss.

In this case, we have a patent on some very obvious technology that in 
no way merits a patent.   We are being asked, as a group, to promote 
this technology.   I am against promoting this technology if 
PacketFront's purpose in acquiring this patent is to charge people 
royalties under some definition of "reasonable."  I am pushing back on 
this in hopes that PacketFront will clarify their intentions.   I 
suspect that they acquired this patent for defensive reasons, and I 
have complete sympathy with that, but if that is the case, I want them 
to change the stated terms to reflect that.   If I don't push back, 
PacketFront has no reason to change their terms, and this creates 
uncertainty for implementors of DHCP: will PacketFront sue me?   Will 
their license terms meet *my* definition of reasonable?

So I'm pushing back.   I hope that PacketFront's intentions are as I 
suspect they are, and that as a result of this pushback they will 
clarify their license terms.   If they do not, I am happy to just let 
the technology go unimplemented - I don't think it's that important.

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