Yaakov - Did you cut that from Nolo's site - they are good people. My argument is that the negotiation of the protocol inside the IETF's vetting process is identical to two engineers arguing and then coming to a new aesthetic implementation, its the new fenders for the truck., or a new warning buzzer when the protocol fails step two - whatever step two was. Don't confuse the term aesthetic here to mean something that it doesn't - or to limit the process of the Utility Patent protection to things that you 'look at'. Likewise, design patents (as opposed to plant patents) could also be used and probably with better luck, but there is more cost to issuing and researching/prosecuting the claims therein. FWIW I initially tried to fit the design model into the Copyright Alone model and couldn't. I needed at least the Patent processes "Aesthetic Design" provisions to make this all work. And yes I agree that the IETF's processes are probably better covered under a comprehensive patent and publishing rights process - something it isn't terribly interested in doing apparently. As to the rest of the Open Source world that has relied on these copyright alone licenses, and with much pain and suffering too - look at the latest revision to the EFF's license... And all of this leads me to believe that more and more opensource code is unpatentable and unprotectable as such. If it is the intent of this management team to take the IETF to where it provides something close to Open Source services then we have a real problem I think since no one bothered to disclose this to the rest of the membership or those contractually bound to the IETF in their participation agreements, which IMHO is a real issue. As to the reliance on a copyright statement alone to cover the IETF's use, that is IMHO broken. The IETF's reliance on "That there must be two physically interoperable ports of any protocol" implemented to meet the Standards Practice takes this out of the Copyright alone Area and creates that Industrial Design that has to be protected. My point to the Aesthetic Patent was that it was a tad easier to deal with IMHO. Todd Glassey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yaakov Stein" <yaakov_s@xxxxxxx> To: <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 11:59 PM Subject: RE: WIPO issues (was: Network Endpoint Assessment (nea)) To qualify for protection, an industrial design must be aesthetic, and I believe that elegant design should be one of our goals in protocol design. However, industrial designs are "divorced from all technical aspects of the article", and thus at least some small portion of our ongoing work may be ineligible for protection. A major obstacle to be overcome before applying for design protection for our work is the fact that ASCII RFCs can not contain lines or colors, and would probably be rejected by the appropriate national offices. Finally, please note the treaties: Terribly Complex Protection for Intellectual Property (TCP/IP) Ugly Dumb Protection for Intellectual Property (UDP/IP) may directly impact our work. Y(J)S _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf