Re: please note: "Variance Request" is about software patents

[Fred Baker <[e-mail]>]

At 3:37 PM 12/16/95, Keith Moore wrote:
>> The IESG has received a request to consider publication of Variance
>> Request for The PPP Connection Control Protocol and The PPP Encryption
>> Control Protocol <draft-kastenholz-ppp-variance-00.txt> as a Best
>> Current Practice RFC.
>The issue behind this variance request has to do with whether
>(and under what conditions) we can standardize protocols that
>allegedly infringe on someone's patent.

>p.s. My personal opinion is that it is inappropriate for IETF
>to standardize any technology that cannot be implemented and
>distributed free of charge.  This would exclude patented technology,
>unless the patent holder agrees to license free implementations
>at no cost.

My personal opinion is that intellectual property rights are something that
the individual has the right and ability to give up voluntarily, and I
would argue that he has the responsibility in certain cases. I have given
up the right to enforce patents in favor of their inclusion in standards,
as I'm sure many have here, and feel that on claims this weak it would be a
good move for Motorola to do the same.

But that's a little like saying that I have the control of my house, and
have the right to contribute the use of my home to public good if I choose
to. Imagine that there were an earthquake in my neighborhood and all the
other houses became unsafe to stay in. Wouldn't it be good to temporarily
contribute my living room floor as sleeping bag space for my neighbors?
Yes, of course. And would it be my responsibility to make provision for my
neighbors? I think so, though many would probably disagree with taking it
that far.

Now, can anyone require that of me? No, and I think it would take some
pretty extreme circumstances for anyone to even ask. The point is that it
is *my* right to give, not someone else's to decide what I should give.

We're at a point here where there is a facility - line compression - which
the working group has some pretty strong opinions about how it should
proceed. The issue is moot if there is a reliable link, except that one
might then owe money to the V.42 bis compression mafia, but the working
group is opposed to *requiring* reliable links. Compression on unreliable
links, according to the testing that various and sundry have done, cannot
be handled without either using the ideas that Motorola claims patent
rights to or giving up some compression performance. Giving up compression
performance isn't really acceptable - what good in an interoperable
standard if no-one in their right mind would deploy it?

And Motorola has chosen to sell the right to use its ideas - to make its
living room floor into a business - instead of letting people just use the
ideas.

Are they obvious ideas? I think so, and would be willing to tell a judge
that, but that's not the point. The point is that the case has not yet been
tried or decided, and may will never be, compression is a widely deployed
technology that often uses exactly the same concepts running over
unreliable links, and we can either continue in our present
non-interoperable fashion or find a way to interoperate.

IEEE, Frame Relay Forum, ANSI, ITU, and others have found room to permit
standardization of patented procedures, in V.42 bis, X.509, FRF DCP
Compression, IEEE 802.5 Source Routing, and a host of other procedures. The
way they do it is to take the vendor at his word, and leave court cases to
folks that want to pursue them. In this way, if someone wants to argue the
case, they can, and if someone wants to act on their belief that the
license is unnecessary, they can take that course and see what happens. But
the rest of us get to forge ahead interoperably meeting our own and our
customers needs.

Personally, having been somewhere near the center of this issue for far too
long (I'm the guy who brought it up, at the San Diego IETF), I would like
to see motion. Deployment of interoperable and non-interoperable
compression technology has gone on all around us while we contemplated our
navels here - the ONLY folks that don't have it is the IETF, bar none. It
has been silly for a long time, and now it's ludicrous. Time to move on.

Standardize the technology, deploy it (or rather, admit that it is in fact
deployed - PPP CCP is a fairly common "proprietary" compression technology,
as I understand it), let the courts do their job if people must argue about
this. And let's go do something else that is more interesting.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Some ideas are so crazy that only an intellectual could believe them...
        George Orwell