Re: [TLS] Last Call: draft-ietf-tls-extractor (Keying Material Exporters for Transport Layer Security (TLS)) to Proposed Standard

[Florian Weimer <[e-mail]>]

* Paul Hoffman:

> At 3:15 PM -0400 7/20/09, Dean Anderson wrote:
>>I am against this standard because of its patent encumbrances and
>>non-free licencing terms.
>
> In the past, I think that Dean Anderson has stated that he is not a
> lawyer (although I can't find the specific reference). Note that the
> statement above is legal advice: he is saying that a particular
> protocol is encumbered. Readers of this thread may or may not want
> to listen to his legal advice.

Eh, no.  It's a recommendation not to publish the draft as an RFC.
It does not even voice a legal opinion.

I really don't see what this is about.  Certicom is pretty close to
making the IETF process pointless, by overzealous filing of IPR
claims.  But apparently, there was a recent clarification that this
key agreement extension is only affected by Certicom's IP if it's used
with ECC, so it's hard to argue that Certicom is carrying out a denial
of service attack on the WG.

> That statement did not say "we have a patent that encumbers the
> specific documents in question".

The IETF process doesn't reward IPR holders for precise IPR
statements.

Anyway, those who object to the ECC infection should strive to remove
it from the base TLS spec.  It doesn't make sense to rehash this
discussion over and over again, for each draft produced by the WG
which happens to be compatible with ECC algorithms and for which
Certicom files an IPR claim.

-- 
Florian Weimer                <[e-mail]>
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