[manet] SRI patent issuce
John Tully <tully@mt.lv> Tue, 18 June 2002 06:30 UTC
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Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:03:32 +0300
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From: John Tully <tully@mt.lv>
Cc: ogier@erg.sri.com, Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com>
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Subject: [manet] SRI patent issuce
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Hello, I have been following the patent issue on SRI's TBRPF. Speedcom Wireless has announced that it has an exclusive license to implement SRI's "Packet Hop" which I understand is the same as TBRPF. The license is for fixed wireless networks. This action makes it appear that it could be impossible for them to comply with the statements they have made in their draft RFC. Maybe someone from their side can clear this up. John From SEC filing: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1014343/000102140802006934/0001021408-02-006934.txt ============================ In January 2001, SPEEDCOM acquired worldwide rights for six years to PacketHop(TM), a wireless routing software developed by SRI International (SRI). Under the terms of the agreement, SPEEDCOM obtains rights to SRI's PacketHop(TM) technology in the fixed wireless infrastructure market for the primary frequencies below 6 GHz. Per the agreement, SRI International received a total of 325,000 shares of common stock of SPEEDCOM that was issued in four traunches. Each traunch was measured on the specific date that the stock was issued on. As of March 31, 2002, the value of these shares at the date of grant is classified in Intellectual property on the balance sheet. SPEEDCOM also has paid $360,000 in cash, included in Intellectual property on the balance sheet, which is being amortized over six years. Per the terms of the agreement, SRI may terminate the exclusive period (18 months) by providing written notice of such termination unless by such time SPEEDCOM has successfully closed a liquid event where SRI had the opportunity to obtain net proceeds of at least $5,000,000. Due to the fact that such an event has not occurred, it is expected that SPEEDCOM will lose its exclusive rights to PacketHop(TM) in July 2002, but will retain its perpetual license agreement. SPEEDCOM has evaluated this long-lived asset for impairment by comparing the discounted expected future cash flows to its carrying amount. The undiscounted expected future cash flows are more than the carrying value of the asset, so an impairment loss has not been recognized. --------------------------------------------------------- At 10:42 AM 5/2/2002 -0700, ogier@erg.sri.com wrote: Fred, > My observation is my own, nobody else's, but it comes from someone > who has been watching the IETF for a *long* time. If you want to > guarantee a > scramble, say the word "patent", and if you want to > guarantee that the IETF > will proceed in a direction only under > duress, apply for one. Let me quote a sentence from "A Novice's Guide to the IETF" http://www.imc.org/novice-ietf.html "Sometimes, the patent holder is generous and promises to give all implementors of a standard a royalty-free license to the patent, thereby making it almost as easy to implement as it would have been if no patent existed." That is exactly what SRI is doing. Our IPR statement contains the following sentence: "If SRI's submission (or portions thereof) is accepted and becomes part of the IETF standard, then SRI will grant any party a royalty-free license under such patents for both commercial and non-commercial uses, to the extent necessary for compliance with the standard." Also note that ISATAP (in the NGTRANS WG) has exactly the same IPR statement as TBRPF: http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/ISI-NGTRANS.txt This issue has been discussed previously on this list, e.g., see Ken Peirce's message dated 12/13/01. Also, in a recent email from Ken to you (Ken, you can chime in if you want), he pointed out that the patent (if awarded) is actually a *bonus* to TBRPF implementors, since SRI will give all implementors a royalty-free license if TBRPF becomes a standard. As Ken noted (and our lawyer agrees), in addition to guaranteeing that TBRPF will be unencumbered, it also provides some protection to TBRPF implementors from 3rd party infringement lawsuits. In your response to Ken, you stated that it is very unlikely that our lawyers will let us concede our rights to TBPRF. This is not true. In fact our lawyers are the ones who wrote the IPR statement. Our lawyers are currently updating the IPR statement to clarify that anyone can implement TBRPF for non-commercial research purposes while TBRPF is being considered by the IETF, as requested by Joe Macker. (The updated statement will be submitted to the IETF in a few days.) Now, if OLSR and TBRPF turn out to be equally good protocols for proactive routing in MANETs, then it would make sense to select the one that has no IPRs. But *so far*, TBRPF has outperformed OLSR significantly in our simulations (and has other advantages that I have previously discussed). These simulations are based on the OLSR code that is available from the INRIA web site, which has been outdated for several months (according to Clausen's message dated 11/29/01), so I hope that newer OLSR code will be available soon. Richard P.S. For reference, here is the excerpt from draft-baker-manet-review-01.txt that I think is unfair: "SRI has aggressively marketed TBRPF and its IPRs to the working group. The fact that a patent has been applied for on certain aspects is, however, severely limiting politically. If there is any way in which the IETF is absolutely predictable, it is that when confronted with a choice between a proposal encumbered with IPR issues and an unencumbered proposal, it will choose the unencumbered one." _______________________________________________ manet mailing list manet@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manet _______________________________________________ manet mailing list manet@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manet
- [manet] SRI patent issuce John Tully
- RE: [manet] SRI patent issuce Ken Peirce
- Re: [manet] SRI patent issuce ogier