On Fri, 31 May 2002 08:40:17 +0300, Pekka Savola said: > A bad thing IETF could do (but not the worst luckily :-) is to give a > signal "Ok.. feel free to patent and give RAND licensing.. depending how > good it is, we might give it a standards status or we might not". That > _encourages_ to do patents (or try to), and we want to avoid that. Patents *in and of themselves* are not a Bad Thing. As far as the IETF goes, the problem only arises when the patent is used to enforce a restrictive licensing policy. Can anybody think of a reason the IETF should object to patented tech *per se*, as opposed to objecting to *hard-to-license* patented tech (the latter I think we have consensus as being a Bad Thing)... -- Valdis Kletnieks Computer Systems Senior Engineer Virginia Tech
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