James- Yes, you're correct. We can't control people who aren't covered by the policy and they can often be the ones who (legitimately or not) have IPR claims that can disrupt our work.
We *can* however, take care of the cases where someone joins the group and actively promotes a technology decision based not on technical merit, but rather based on a desire to generate licensing revenue (or other market influence) based on their patent claims. Unfortunately, there's risk no matter what we do - the attempt here is to reduce the risk as much as is practical given the loose process and open community focus we have. -Gabe > -----Original Message----- > From: James A. Donald [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 9:31 PM > To: Gabe Wachob > Cc: 'Martin Atkins'; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; specs@openid.net > Subject: Re: [OpenID] OpenID IPR Policy Draft > > Gabe Wachob wrote: > > Actually, the language was changed from "post to a > > list", not "subscribe to a list" for this very reason. > > It appears to me that your intent is, or should be, to > protect against patent trolls, who are likely to > retroactively patent the OpenID standard now that it is > being widely adopted. > > In the US, you can file a patent in which you *claim* > you invented stuff one year prior to the patent > application. > > So the technology is first proposed and described on > this list, on 2006 December 7, 2006. It is incorporated > into the standard and comes to be widely used around > about, say, 2007 August. On 2007 December 5, 2007, the > patent troll has a friendly individual inventor file an > patent application claiming to have invented the > technology on 2007, december 6. > > They keep the patent under water for a couple of years, > preventing it from being published, until evil unpopular > giant megacorp, say intel, has been using the technology > for some time. They then surface the patent. Should > intel fail to settle, they have inventor tell the jury > he is being oppressed by evil giant megacorp. Jury > awards the patent troll a zillion dollars, and cabillion > on top of that. > > Unfortunately, your proposed measure is of limited > effectiveness, since the our friend the highly jury > sympathetic inventor is probably not signed up on this > list, his expertise being primarily in being loved by > juries, rather than computer technology. > > Indeed, no measures whatsoever are likely to be very > effective. The patent office wants people to take out > more patents, just as Ford wants people to buy more > Fords. The judiciary similarly wants more human > activity to be subject to patents, just as they want > more laws, and those laws of broader scope, hence the > steady shrinkage of any portion of the constitution that > begins "congress shall make no law ..." _______________________________________________ specs mailing list specs@openid.net http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs