On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 01:04:32PM -0700, Ted Hardie wrote: > I believe it is fairer to recognize that in your example proposal B > is known to have been patented where A is not. There is always the > chance that someone will turn out to have secured rights which they > later claim read on A. In that case it may actually be better to > choose B, knowing that the license offered works for the development > and deployment community than to choose A. In other words, a > "defensive" patent declaration by someone whose license works for > the appropriate community may actually add security. It doesn't > completely remove the risk that someone will turn up with other > rights, but it really can help. This doesn't follow. Just because a company has patents that read on B doesn't guarantee some other company *also* has patents that read on B. So you can't say with certainty choosing path B is better than path A just because a company has already declared they have patents that read on B. The US Patent Office may have simply issued two patents on the identical technology (I believe the cannonical example is the case where three patents were issued covering the same compression algorithm). Or there may have been other aspects of B that happened to be patented by another company, and if it is currently owned by a Patent Troll who has no interest in participating in the IETF process, there is no way for the working group to know about the Patent Troll's patents. Aren't patents fun? :-) - Ted _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf