In message <20040525225350.GB25300@mail>, David Maxwell writes:
>On Tue, 25 May 2004, Mipam wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 May 2004, Michael Hertrick wrote:
>> > http://news.com.com/Cisco+to+patent+security+fix/2100-1002_3-5216494.html?
>tag=cd.lede
>> >
>> > Apparently Cisco is trying to patent a RST-ACK mechanism for TCP.  Their
>> 
>> The patent statement is here:
>> 
>> http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/cisco-ipr-draft-ietf-tcpm-tcpsecure.txt
>> 
>> the only thing is if you come back and sue Cisco for IPR infringment
>> then cisco can use this patent against you. Btw, NetBSD implemented this
>> draft (the fix that is) as far as i know.
>
>I think Cisco deserves some bad press as a result of this. Working 'with
>the community' to develop a fix, and release an RFC as a urgent change
>to the stack - then declaring it patentable - is deceitful.
>
>It does cause an additional amount of work for people who choose to
>build on top of NetBSD platforms - to keep track of the Patent sticks
>they can be clubbed with. Perhaps it should be #ifdef'd so that people
>could avoid using the code.
>
>Perhaps, in future, the IETF should refuse to work with Cisco on issues
>like this one, given this example of how they can be expected to behave.

There are several problems with your note.  First, the IETF has no 
problem with patented technology per see; see RFC 3668.  (I'm speaking 
here as the chair of the IPR working group, which had a strong 
consensus against changing the IETF's policy on patents.  That said, 
any IETF working group is free to reject any given solution if it feels 
that some patents are an undue burden on implementors.  Picking the 
right solution to any problem involves balancing many different things, 
such as elegance, complexity, completeness of solution, etc.; patents 
are one more factor that a WG's members are free to consider.  (See RFC 
3669 for some examples of this.)

That said, there is unhappiness in the TCPM working group about this, 
and they may opt for a different solution.  But the IETF as an 
organization can accept either outcome here.

Beyond that, it's not clear that Cisco is patenting the product 
of the "work with the community".  If they did, they'd be legally 
obligated to include all of these people as co-inventors, and any one 
of them could "sell" his or her rights for $0.00 -- in a situation like 
that, *all* inventors have full rights to negotiate whatever terms they 
wish with any prospective buyers.  That's why patent lawyers hate that 
sort of situation -- they think that each partner will undercut the 
others, until no one can make any money.  But as far as I know, Cisco 
has not yet published the details on what their patent application 
covers -- and until that happens, it isn't clear what is or is not 
encumbered.  Not a great situation -- but we have to live with it.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb