At 19:38 25/05/2004 -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

>That said, there is unhappiness in the TCPM working group about this,
>and they may opt for a different solution.

IMHO, what makes me a bit unhappy was that the draft was submitted to the 
group, and *then*, much later, the issue of the aptent was announced.

I personally only read the draft, and only make a few comments about it. 
But I wouldn't have made me happy (at all) reading about the patent issue 
if I had provided extensive feedback on it.


>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.

I think Cisco is patenting the original draft (which does not include the 
feedback from the TCPM WG).

However, according to the draft, the solution the draft proposes seems to 
have been worked out by people from Cisco *and* Juniper. So it's not clear 
why Cisco (only) patented it.


--
Fernando Gont
e-mail: fernando@gont.com.ar || fgont@acm.org