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>]

  Look, no one is "deceiving the internet community"! And I'm not
encouraging people to knowingly infringe on patents.

  There is no known patent necessary to implement this draft (basically
ECDH). There may be unknown ones but that possibility exists for most
every I-D and one cannot disclose the existence of an unknown patent.

  You're spreading FUD. Please stop.

  Dan.

On Fri, June 27, 2008 2:43 pm, Dean Anderson wrote:
> If there is any uncertainty, the the proper course of action is to
> disclose the possibility (because its relevant), and then contact the
> patent holder. Infringing the patent because you "can't be certain",
> doesn't exempt one from the criminal penalties of intentional
> infringement, nor the civil penalties of unintentional infringement.
> Otherwise, everyone would simply claim that they "weren't certain", and
> just ignore patents altogether. Instead, one's obligation is to get
> certainty, or get permission.  "Uncertainty" is a frivolous assertion
> that also doesn't exempt one from the law or from following RFC3979.
>
> If one wants to dispute a specific patent claim, that's your
> business--there are procedures for doing that--I encourage that.
> However, deceiving the internet community into unwitting and unwilling
> patent infringement is not a proper (or lawful) method of fighting
> patents. But I don't think the authors or IETF managers intend to
> secretly fight patents through failure to disclose these patents to the
> internet community.  I don't think object of the present
> misrepresentation is to get the internet community to unwittingly
> infringe, and subsequently be forced to help fight the Certicom patents.
>
> In the TLS-Authz case, at least, the author (Housley) was working
> directly for the patent holder.  I don't think Housley intended to (by
> the misreprentation of TLS-Authz patent status)  fight the patent by
> secretly imposing the burden of disputing the TLS-Authz patent on the
> internet community.
>
> Failure to disclose the patents prevents the internet community from
> looking for and finding non-infringing alternatives.  Non-infringing
> alternatives is by far the cheapest method of fighting patents.
> RFC3979 requires disclosure and requires that a discussion of
> non-patented alternatives take place. A submarine-patented standard
> obtained through deception is the very worst scenario--except for the
> patent holder--who can make a _LOT_ of money on a patented STANDARD that
> they own and that everyone else is forced to use or committed to using.
>
>
> 		--Dean
>
> On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Dan Harkins wrote:
>
>>
>>   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.
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Av8 Internet   Prepared to pay a premium for better service?
> www.av8.net         faster, more reliable, better service
> 617 344 9000
>
>
>


_______________________________________________
TLS mailing list
TLS@xxxxxxxx
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls