Re: Expired patents

Actually doing anything more than the original posting could create a 
legal requirement for much more work to be done on the part of the IETF.

Also those same patents on network IP may also control the operations of 
the IETF which it is NOT immune to, in fact its work in creating 
standards and then using them itself makes it subject to those same 
patents. This isnt the world of the 107 exemption.

Todd Glassey

On 6/19/2014 11:21 PM, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
> I agree with Dave about being cautious. Of all the hassles with 
> patents, figuring out whether a declared patent itself is still valid 
> or is expired is the least of worries.
>
> We have the patent declaration mechanism because we want patent 
> holders to declare favorable licencing conditions (royality free,...) 
> and because we want everybody to know about (potentially) relevant 
> patents. Adding patent expiry information doesn't add a lot of value 
> to this.
>
> Up to now, as far as I understand, we (i.e. the IETF) don't provide 
> any kind of additional information whatsoever because such information 
> is at risk of being incorrect or incomplete. For patent expiry, that 
> risk is low, but it might start us down a slippery slope we better avoid.
>
> Regards,   Martin.
>
> On 2014/06/20 11:27, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> On 6/19/2014 6:24 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>> I was wondering whether there is a need for an occasional sweep
>>> over the IPR disclosures to tag all those that cite expired
>>> patents. We've been at this long enough that it is starting to
>>> be relevant. For example, I just noticed that IBM's NAT patent
>>> (US5371852) must have expired by now.
>>
>>
>> That is certainly a reasonable suggestion, but I suspect it can
>> sometimes carry unfortunate complexities.
>>
>> For example imagine someone filing a continuing patent but not updating
>> the IETF's records. There would be relevant IPR encumbrance but we
>> wouldn't necessarily know it.
>>
>> No matter what we do or don't do, the record won't be perfect, but we
>> probably should be cautious about having our records move from
>> 'encumbered' to 'not encumbered' through any simple process such as a
>> timeout.
>>
>> d/
>>
>>
>
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