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Re: Modular approach to key management
>From ipsec-request@ans.net Mon Nov 14 05:19:13 1994
> I'd like to know _exactly_ what the patent status is of each of the
>proposals on the table.
Let me make the SKIP patent status known as well.
There aren't any patents that exist today, but there will be
soon to issue patents. Because these patents dont exist today,
there aren't any numbers I can give you. I will be the inventor,
and Sun Microsystems will be the assignee.
Let me be clear about the patent license issue. Sun will use the
SKIP patents in a defensive manner, only.
Sun will license on a royalty-free basis the SKIP patents to all
comers. There will be a ONE-TIME fee of $99, which is required
for legal reasons, not financial. This is because the only
purpose of the license is defensive (Sun disclaims all liability)
and the reason for the fee is that contract law stipulates that
something of value has to exchange for a contract to bind. A
nominal one-time fee of $99 is something that was considered
adequate for this purpose. This is for commercial use of the
patent.
For non-commercial use, (individual, internal business, experimental
etc.) there is no license and no fee.
Until there are actual US patent numbers, Sun will use its internal
file numbers to license the patents. For more information/questions,
send mail to "SKIP_administrator@eunuchs.Sun.COM". I expect that
that the license forms will be available for IESG/ISOC
consideration soon, and definitely before the San Jose IETF
meeting.
Naturally, we cant guarantee anything about non-Sun patents
(if there are any) being implicated in our proposal.
We have already taken steps to inform the IESG and WG chairs
of this. We are also working on arranging a BOF on Intellectual Property
(IP) issues as they relate to IETF standardization at the next IETF
meeting. We are doing this because we need a more appropriate forum
for discussing suitability of patents/licenses than mailing lists like
the ipsec, which are more appropriate for technical discussions.
Indeed, Jeff Schiller has advised against debating suitability of
patent licenses etc. at the WG meeting. For the same reason, we didn't
mention this on this list, until an appropriate mailing list was
constructed, probably out of the BOF activity at the upcoming IETF.
That way we could have directed follow-up questions to that list,
after we made the announcement on ipsec.
However, since you have raised this issue, I decided not to
wait until the next IETF meeting.
We believe that defensive patents are a good thing from an
IETF standardization point of view, because they are a good
defense against future patent claims. We would be happy
to explain this and other issues at the BOF on IP issues
at the San Jose meeting, where we have invited our patent
attorneys to attend.
Based on what we have told them, Security AD Jeff Schiller and the
WG chairs dont have any objections to discussing SKIP for IETF
standardization purposes, from a patent/licensing point of view.
Other than this, it is important to note that the PKP DH patent
(the most important part of SKIP) expires sometime in 1997.
Regards,
Ashar.
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