>> I specifically applied for patents underlying the technology behind >> RFC 4722/RFC 5022 and RFC 4730 specifically to prevent third parties, >> who are not part of the IETF process, from extracting royalties from >> someone who implements MSCML or KPML. > That was a waste of your time and money. Publication of those inventions by you, at zero cost to you and others, > would have been sufficient to prevent someone else from trying to patent them. Quite untrue, in my experience. The patent examiners almost never find prior art from the open literature. Their decisions are based on their databases of existing patents. So althought you are quite right in principle, open publication has low probability of blocking someone from getting a patent. Fighting a granted patent on the base of open publication prior art would cost much more. Y(J)S _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf