At 5:53 PM -0700 10/29/07, Lawrence Rosen wrote: >\The notion that each IETF working group has to approach patent issues on its >own, without help, is silly. Set an enforceable IETF patent policy for free >and open standards, and bring the technical community together through these >groups (and others!) to bust the bad patents we encounter, and I think our >problems with patents will ease substantially. This is a strawman. The IETF's patent policy is known: we require participants to NOTE it WELL all the time. Working groups do and should evaluate the known IPR landscape around their work, but presuming, as you do above, that all patents are bad patents which participants should spend their efforts busting is just wrong. There are patents that advance the art, and the IETF has clearly shown in the past its willingness to adapt to them when it needs to. I'd also say that IETF participants who spent their timing trying to bust patents on the lines of those Eric mentioned at the start of this thread are wasting their time. If the license doesn't stop implementation, the effort seems to me, personally, as better spent elsewhere. I've cc'ed the IPR working group, and I suggest follow-ups go there, as Brian has suggested. Travel will make me a bit late in reading replies, by the way; no offense intended. regards, Ted Hardie _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf