Re: [TLS] Document Action: 'TLS Elliptic Curve Cipher Suites with SHA-256/384 and AES Galois Counter Mode' to Informational RFC

["Dan Harkins" <dharkins@xxxxxxxxxx>]

  Dean,

On Fri, June 27, 2008 10:02 am, Dean Anderson wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Russ Housley wrote:
>
>> >Indeed, it appears to be the case that I was correct on the principle
>> >issue:  That the general public is not licenced to use these patents on
>> >implementing this draft.
>>
>> Right.  This is the reason the document is a candidate for the
>> standards track.
>
> So, you (Russ--chair of IETF) knew of the patent encumbrances, but
> failed to report those facts in an IETF 'IPR' (patent) disclosure?  And
> the WG failed to discuss non-patent alternatives in the working group as
> required by RFC3979?  This seems to be almost the same issues as with
> TLS-Authz.  It is too bad that Sam Hartman is no longer on the IESG,
> this time.

  I think you are _assuming_ that there are patent encumbrances.
Certicom has patents in ECC but it is not clear that any of them
necessarily apply to this draft. Maybe they do; maybe they don't. But
given that uncertainty there isn't a whole lot to "disclose". Keep in
mind it's hard to prove a negative ("no patents are infringed....") so
the most innocent of I-Ds could, maybe, possibly infringe on some weird
patent somewhere.

  Certicom would, of course, love to license all sorts of things to you
whether you need them or not. They would like everyone to believe that
_any_ use of elliptic curves requires licensing from them but that is
just FUD.

  regards,

  Dan.

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