Re: [OSPF] IPR Disclosure: Cisco's Statement of IPR Related to draft-ietf-ospf-te-metric-extensions-04

[Acee Lindem <[e-mail]>]

Hi Curtis, 
The draft was first presented at IETF 80 in Prague in the Routing, ISIS, and OSPF WGs. At the time, the biggest concern was the overlap with other delay/loss encoding drafts in the CCAMP WG. I looked at the minutes of the 3 WGs and IPR was not declared or questioned. I also spoke to one of the patent authors and the timing of the IPR declaration was not intentional - both the draft/patent authors are co-authors on a fair number of Internet drafts and patents. In the future, we'll assure the IPR question is raised prior to making any draft an OSPF WG document. 
I won't comment as to whether the simple encoding and advertisement of these delay/loss metrics actually violates a patent specifying specific usage of the metrics. 
Thanks,
Acee 

On Oct 4, 2013, at 4:46 PM, Curtis Villamizar wrote:

> 
> In message <[e-mail]>
> IETF Secretariat writes:
> 
>> 
>> Dear Alia Atlas, John Drake, Spencer Giacalone, Stefano Previdi, David Ward:
>> 
>> An IPR disclosure that pertains to your Internet-Draft entitled "OSPF Traffic
>> Engineering (TE) Metric Extensions" (draft-ietf-ospf-te-metric-extensions) was
>> submitted to the IETF Secretariat on 2013-09-17 and has been posted on the "IETF
>> Page of Intellectual Property Rights Disclosures"
>> (https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/2199/). The title of the IPR disclosure is
>> "Cisco's Statement of IPR Related to draft-ietf-ospf-te-metric-
>> extensions-04."");
>> 
>> The IETF Secretariat
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> OSPF mailing list
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>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ospf
> 
> 
> Since two of the authors are named on the patent, it is hard to
> understand how they could not have known about the IPR.
> 
> Since the patent was applied for in 2004 and the first iteration of
> this draft was in 2011, and at least two co-authors of the draft knew
> about the patent by way of also being co-inventors of the patent, this
> appears to be a blatent late disclosure of IPR.
> 
> Would the authors please explain how this was allowed to occur.
> 
> Also, the patent seems (to me) to apply only to local-repair paths and
> not to primary paths.  Would the inventors please confirm (or deny).
> 
> I'm not sure how all the prior art on using multiple metrics,
> including additive constraints on "paths", could be construed as not
> applying to "local-repair paths".  But then again, I'm not a lawyer
> and hope never to be one.  The patent system at work again.
> 
> Curtis
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