nanog mailing list archives

Re: Patents, IETF and Network Operators


From: Jorge Amodio <jmamodio () gmail com>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:38:56 -0600

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Scott Brim <scott.brim () gmail com> wrote:
Jorge Amodio allegedly wrote on 01/21/2010 10:41 EST:
As an starting point you should read "The Tao of the IETF" RFC4677 (currently,
update draft in progress).

About your particular question read section 8.4.5.

Regards
Jorge

Right.  And it's subtler than you think.  Some network operators have
patents (not just vendors).  Some are held by organizations that only
exist to hold patents and don't actually know much about networking.
And just because something is patented doesn't mean it isn't
interoperable -- most networking standards are patented.

Just like as
- "US Patent 6701329 - Aging and scavenging of DNS resource records"
(Microsoft)
- "US Patent 7337910 - Methods and devices for responding to request
for unregistered domain name to indicate a predefined type of service"
(Verisign SiteFinder fiasco)
- "US Patent  6560634 - Method of determining unavailability of an
internet domain name" (Verisign)
- "US Patent  7580982 - Email filtering system and method" (Go Daddy)
- "US Patent 7130878 - Systems and methods for domain name
registration by proxy" (Go Daddy)

Just to list a few.

Be careful the next time you use "vi", somebody may have already
patented that regular expression.

Cheers
Jorge


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