Re: [TLS] [Ietf-honest] Last Call: draft-ietf-tls-extractor (Keying

[Dean Anderson <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, 2 Dec 2009, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     Seems to me that, in the context of asking parties to self-declare their
>     "IP", it's better to error on the side of overly broad terminology.
> 
> I think you may not appreciate how different these laws are.  There is
> no way copyrights can restrict the use of a normal internet standard.

User interface copyrights could have done so. We defeated UI copyrights,
but people can continue to invent new ways of using old laws.  It would
be better to know about such novel claims sooner rather than later

> (Someone might have a copyright on text you want to incorporate into
> the text of the standard, but that is a different kind of issue.
> Also, the IETF presumably knows who contributed that text, so there
> is no need to ask the public "Did any of this text come from you?")
> 
>      Someone somewhere is thinking he has a trademark on the first four
>     octets of a protocol message
> 
> Trademark laws concerns the way products are packaged and advertised.

It might be possible to trademark an IP address block.  If IP blocks are
hijacked, and used to send spam, the reputation of the rightful owner or
delegated user of the block is harmed in much the same way as false
labeling of products and services.  I can't say whether this is a good
argument, but it appears that people in some quarters are thinking about
it.  

Trademarks could affect a standard if the standard incorporates the
trademark in the text. Sun tried to trademark the phrase "Open Systems"  
once. (The OSF caught the notice and successfully objected).

> Basically, only patent law can prohibit use of a standard.

We hope. But how do we ask (essentiall) if someone is trying to invent
some new way of using these laws (as they did with UI copyrights)?

		--Dean


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