Patents to be placed in PD

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This appeared on the IPSEC list (Hooray!).
jwlowe@IBM followed up by announce the dedication of IBM's patent
#5,148,479 to the public.

Is this the apocalypse or something?  Never have I seen such signs
of rationality in companies of this size.  

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From: Ashar.Aziz@eng.sun.com (Ashar Aziz)
Newsgroups: hks.lists.ipsec
Subject: SKIP patents will be in public domain
Date: 5 Dec 1994 15:44:20 -0500
Lines: 17
Sender: root@bb.hks.net
Message-ID: <9412051928.AA25371@miraj.Eng.Sun.COM>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bb.hks.net

I am happy to state that Sun management has asked me to make the following 
statement regarding the SKIP patents.

1. The SKIP patents (when they issue) will be placed in the public domain. 
Anyone may use it if they wish, with no rights or dues pertaining to Sun. 
There will be no need to license SKIP patent rights.

2. Sun Microsystems did this to help the industry make progress in the
area of security. We view this as an indication of our willingness to
promote open standards.

I thank all of you who publicly commented on this issue, because your 
comments helped bring about this change in Sun's policy.

Regards,
Ashar.

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"L. Todd Masco" says:
> This appeared on the IPSEC list (Hooray!).
> jwlowe@IBM followed up by announce the dedication of IBM's patent
> #5,148,479 to the public.
> 
> Is this the apocalypse or something?  Never have I seen such signs
> of rationality in companies of this size.  

This was caused by tremendous pressure and by Sun being forced into a
similar move earlier in the day. It was the feeling of many members of
the IETF working group that the MKMP proposal from IBM could not be
considered without the patents being fixed up. Similarly, it was the
feeling of the group that SKIP from Sun was unacceptable without the
patents being fixed. Sun announced low cost licenses which were still
unacceptable. IBM announced free licences. Sun announced that the
patents would be assigned to the public domain. IBM announced the same
four hours later.

Your faithful IETF correspondant...

.pm