Patent issue may be moot, was RE: Constructors motion
OK, folks, always remember that I am the naive member
of this group & have no idea of the history you all
have with each other. And if my naivete has led us
down a wrong path, I apologise for that.
Now, on the patent issue, the IEEE has a long history
of dealing with patent issues both for good & for ill.
There is even a patent committee for dealing with
these issues directly when they come up.
http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/patcom/
Disclosure is only the first step. Once a patent is
known that threatens fairness in some feature of an
IEEE standard, the chair is supposed to ask the
patent holder to fill out an LOA (Letter of Assurance)
form. It can be found here:
http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/patcom/patents.html
You will find a dozen or so filled out LOAs on this
page that are currently in effect as examples.
The patent holder is free to declare any statement of
claims WRT the patent that is desired. They run the
gamut from "Its ours & you can't touch it" to "I give
it freely to the world in service to humanity".
The committee then must decide if the terms of those
claims are reasonable enough for everyone to live with
or too onerous to include in the standard.
Then even THAT is not the end. After we are done with
it the IEEE has to decide if it is willing to accept a
standard written in this way with the LOAs in question.
Now, I double checked this information by consulting
with "Bob Davis" <bobd@xxxxxxxx> before I wrote this
note to you all. Bob is the current chair of the MSC,
the super committee within the IEEE that sponsors our
work.
But in the time it took to get through to Bob on New
Year's Eve, events have overtaken me.
Baker says he already asked Nate for LOAs which Nate's
CEO replied to on 1/19/09 & which they received on
1/26/09. You can find those LOAs here:
http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/patcom/loa-1788-sunfish-19jan2009.pdf
Still, we have some decisions to make.
Since the slides involving the requirements for patent
information are "formally" presented at every meeting,
Nathalie or Baker should request of Nate if there are
any changes since his declaration of 3 years ago. And
Nate should reply.
Assuming Nate is up to date, it is up to the rest of us
to decide if Nate's patents & the terms his CEO have
provided in the LOAs are acceptable for inclusion within
our standard. You will notice that Nate's CEO checked the
"reasonable rates to an unrestricted number of applicants"
box in both LOAs. This is known as the RAND option (for
Reasonable And Non-Discrimanatory) & is the common case
for companies such as Sunfish.
I will leave it to those better versed in the law to decide
what that means for our use of these patents. You should
know that RAND conditions have been found acceptable to
IEEE committees in the past. Still we, as a body, must
decide if it is acceptable to us. That is, we have to
decide if we are willing to live with those conditions &
include the patented methods within the standard versus
exclude them in favor of some non-patented method.
BTW, Bob tells me that, in our discussions we can discuss
the merits of one approach or another but we cannot discuss
price. To do so would constitute price fixing.
Then we write it up according to those decisions & the IEEE
PatCom lawyers decide if the IEEE is willing to live with
our decision.
It is my personal opinion that all of Nathalie, Baker, Nate,
& Nate's CEO have done their due diligence on this matter &
the issue of patents is now moot. We may discuss our
opinions about modal intervals on their merits but I don't
think we should consider patents to be an issue.
As I said, IMHO.
BTW, please cc "Bob Davis" <bobd@xxxxxxxx> on on anything
having to do with this matter. It will end up in his lap
anyway.
Well, what a way to start the new year... :-)
Enjoy,
Dan