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Re: Patent & licence for IPSec ?

Daniel,
what did I miss here, what I am looking for is some way of knowing that some
other patent holder won't sue my company for infringing on any existing
IPSec patents. That involves two processes, the first: disclosure, and the
second: patent licensing/use authorization.

If the IETF cannot make the use of it's standards more than a crap shoot
then it may be doomed. What's the point of banking on a set of standards
where the entry fee can be years in court and millions of dollars.

This is a serious issue, because it gets at the standards process and the
root of who pays for all our playpens and sandboxes. Whether we as engineers
like it or not, Business and Business Process are driving the NII and all it
stands fo'.

Sorry to disagree with you but ... If the IETF cannot make its standards
more secure from a commercial sense then its long term form and fashion are
likely to change or to be changed.

The first time somebody sues the IETF/IESG/ISOC for creating a standard and
allowing the standard-process to complete when it has either "direct
knowledge" or "enforced ignorance" as to the patent status of any given
effort - The standards effort will change forever. After all if the IETF
knowingly ignores the charter and in particular the IP issues inside of
RFC2026 and its follow successors, IMHO - the IETF could wind up liable for
damages by not enforcing its publicly stated operational processes and
policies.

This is pretty serious stuff since most of us are betting our companies
livelihood on these technologies or derivatives thereof.

Here's another two cents for the pile and that making my contribution 4 all
told - Can I buy any legal time for this?

Todd



-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Harkins <dharkins@cisco.com>
To: Todd S. Glassey <TSGman@earthlink.net>
Cc: ipsec@tis.com <ipsec@tis.com>
Date: Tuesday, July 21, 1998 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: Patent & licence for IPSec ?


>  You're asking for cisco or IBM to give you free legal advice. I don't
>think that's gonna happen. If you want a professional legal opinion ask
>a legal professional and be prepared to pay (and it'll be more than the
>2 cents you contributed already :-).
>
>  Dan.
>
>On Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:54:58 PDT you wrote
>> Hillary,
>> I have been listening/reading this thread for a bit now and this is
really
>> important material to deal with as far as basing any deliverables on
these
>> technologies and the legal impacts thereof - It seems to me that to date,
>> this thread has been about the "lay understanding" of the IPSec process
and
>> while that may be accurate I personally would feel better if there was a
>> corporate counsel from one of the players - maybe Cisco or IBM that
agrees
>> with these general responses. Maybe that would be willing to issue and
>> opinion.
>>
>> Few companies, especially the smaller EC startups, could survive an
all-out
>> damages effort from one of the big players and so this is actually really
>> important to their adoption of the IPSec standards.
>>
>>
>> Just my two-cents -
>> Todd
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Hilarie Orman <ho@earth.hpc.org>
>> To: kent@bbn.com <kent@bbn.com>
>> Cc: mat@ca.mew.com <mat@ca.mew.com>; ipsec@tis.com <ipsec@tis.com>
>> Date: Monday, July 20, 1998 7:36 AM
>> Subject: Re: Patent & licence for IPSec ?
>>
>>
>> >>   At this time are not aware of any intellectual property issues with
the
>> >>   base IPsec protocols and algorithms, or with IKE use of D-H.  Use of
>> RSA
>> >>   for certificate signatures, or use of ECC for key exchange does
involve
>> >>   patent issues.
>> >
>> >ECC over F[2^p] for DH key exchange does not infringe on intellectual
>> >property.
>> >
>> >Hilarie
>> >
>>
>