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Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 02:06:24 -0500
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
To: patent-news@world.std.com
Subject: PATNEWS: IBM's free software offer - how about its patents?

!19981214  IBM's free software offer - how about its patents?

    Today's New York Times reports that IBM is joining the free software
movement by releasing the source code to its secure electronic mail
processing program, Secure Mailer.  "Secure Mailer offers an alternative
to several other freely available programs that route Internet mail,
including Sendmail and QMail, as well as to commercial programs like
Microsoft's Exchange". ...  "IBM researchers said that one of the
drawbacks to Sendmail was that it had been written as a large, monolithic
piece of software.  As a result it has both performance and security
limitations". ... "In contrast, Mr. Venema [an IBM researcher] has developed
Secure Mailer as a cluster of modules, all of which distrust each other.
This creates a more secure program."

    Sounds like great software, and a welcome addition to the free software
movement.  But unlike most other contributors to the free software movement,
IBM has a large issued and pending patent portfolio, and a reputation of
asserting its patent portfolio aggressively.  Will IBM be issuing guarantees
that anyone using the Secure Mailer system will be exempt from infringement
of IBM patents that pertain to Secure Mailer?

    A needless worry you say?  Well the November 9th issue of NetworkWorld
reports that IBM informed the IETF that IBM will charge licensing fees
for pending patents that pertain to the Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS)
quality-of-service (QoS) specification.  MPLS defines a standard way to
steer IP traffic through the Internet over predefined routes, providing
predictable performance, and thereby helping to guarantee IP QoS.  IBM's
attitude:

        "The Internet Engineering Task Force will have to get used to
        patented technology", says John Tavs, TCP/IP technology
        manager for IBM in Research Triangle Park.  "As long as patents
        are legal in the US and networks are important to business,
        then patents will play an important role in the standards
        process.  The Internet community has to decide how it's going
        to responsibly address patented technology", Tavs says.

Nice pompous posturing from IBM, given IBM's refusal to take the patent
process responsibly by doing much searching for its patent applications (on
top of fighting any reform to the PTO's computing examination system),
forcing groups like the IETF to then have to deal with IBM's portfolio.
IBM says it also has patent pending on other technologies such as the Virtual
Router Redundancy Protocol and the Open Shortest Path First Protocol.
But, as observed by IETF chairman Fred Baker:

        "Intellectual property in its own right is not a problem",
        Baker says.  But by complicating a standard, the company
        may force implementers to seek alternative methods for
        carrying out the specification, he says.  "If there are
        two equal technologies, they will go for the unencumbered
        one".

Tom Downey, Cisco's director of product marketing for the Enterprise WAN
business unit says IBM's patent claims are part of IBM's "Old World"
attitude:

        "In the New World of networking, patents are there to horse
        trade and cross-license, not to make money".  He adds that
        the smaller vendors - the start-ups - are going to be the
        ones affected because the larger vendors can just swap
        patents with IBM.

Tony Rybczynski, director of strategic marketing and technologies at Nortel
Networks:

        "If you are a small company, you are not going to pay a lot for
        a patent - because you can't."

Mel Beckman, chief technology officer for the Systems and Software
Consortium, an ISP in Santa Barbara, says he already has to pay an extra
7% more for his Cisco routers with SNA capabilities because Cisco licenses
SNA from IBM, adding that IBM is going against the nature of open standards:

        "Vendors bring their technology to the table to promulgate
        standards for interoperability, not to feather their nests.
        I'd be worried about standards that could get set and then
        vendors get the money for it.  Proprietary interests stifle
        innovation.  It's not healthy for the open standards process".

So what's does all of this mean in light of IBM's offer to release the source
code to Secure Mailer?  Just that those in the free software community
starting to interact with IBM (such as the current talks over Apache, and
efforts to support Linux) should be very careful.  You could eng up shaking
one hand of IBM and getting slapped by another.

And all of this is yet another example of the waste and confusion caused by
the PTO's apathy to issuing quality computing and networking patents, waste
and confusion that hurts small entities way too much.  If you don't like
IBM's patenting activities, just don't complain to/about IBM, complain to
and about the PTO is too addicted to issuing "licenses to sue".

                              ====================

     A news item over the Bloomberg wire reports that Britain's Elonex PLC
sued Dell, Packard Bell and Micron Electronics over patents dealing with
reduced power consuming color monitors.

                              ====================

     Wall Street Journal recently reported that three lawsuits were dismissed
that had been filed against Intuit over Year 2000 problems with its Quicken
personal finance software, apparently over problems Quicken might have with
its online banking module not handling dates starting in 2000.

     About 20 Year-2000 patents have been issued by the PTO to date, all
improperly examined by seven different primary examiners who missed some
fairly blatantly obvious prior art.  But that's a PATNEWS bash for after
the holidays.

                              ====================


Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service