[Fwd: Re: Please oppose patent-encumbered technologies, including draft-housley-tls-authz-extns]

Simon Josefsson simon at josefsson.org
Fri Feb 1 08:10:45 UTC 2008



Ben Finney <ben-TqlCGjI+HWGnbCmf7pGUHw at public.gmane.org> writes:

> On 01-Nov-2007, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Ben Finney <ben-TqlCGjI+HWGnbCmf7pGUHw-XMD5yJDbdMReXY1tMh2IBg at public.gmane.org> writes:
>> 
>> > Over on the IETF discussion list, I've been asked to "present 
>> > evidence" about the patent-encumbered status of the technology in 
>> > 'draft-housley-tls-authz-extns'.
>
>> As far as I know, there is only a patent application at this time, 
>> but it is likely to be published as a patent eventually.
>
> Thanks. Can you point us to information about the specific patent 
> application?

It is mentioned in the IETF IPR notification:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/912/
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/ipr_detail_show.cgi?ipr_id=833

It seems down now though...  searching for the patent number given in
that notification should work.

>> The author's company was founded in 2005.  I'm not sure what "patent 
>> enforcement" means in practice.  In any case, I'm not aware of any 
>> lawsuits from them, but I haven't looked.  They have been trying to 
>> get GnuTLS to sign their patent license though.
>
> I don't suppose any of this is online where I can point others to it?

Some of it is available on the ietf at ietf.org list, but I think the
specific requests were in private emails.  The license is available
directly from them:

http://redphonesecurity.com/license.htm
http://redphonesecurity.com/RedPhoneSecurity_GeneralUseLicense_TLSAuthorizations_2007-06-18.pdf

Since I wouldn't be able to sign anything on behalf of GnuTLS or the FSF
anyway, I asked them to talk to the FSF instead.

/Simon




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