Subject: [IPsec] IPR statement for draft-detienne-ikev2-recovery

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 09:37:12 -0800

Greetings again. Cisco has recently posted an IPR statement that is relevant to our charter. Please see <http://www.ietf.org/ietf-ftp/IPR/cisco-ipr-draft-detienne-ikev2-recovery-03.txt>. You can see the patent application referenced in the IPR statement at <http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080313461.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080313461&RS=DN/20080313461>.

Before reacting to this announcement, please review the IETF's IPR policy at <http://www.ietf.org/ipr/policy.html>, and please read the specific IPR statement carefully. You may wish to inform any legal counsel you have about this.

On a personal note, I believe that it would have been much more appropriate for Cisco to have let the WG know about this IPR before we put the draft by name in our charter. I also note that at least one of the co-authors on the named draft was not informed of the IPR; in my opinion, this is particularly inappropriate.

We will begin the discussion of which secure crash discovery protocol the WG wants to adopt in the next few days, and this IPR statement might or might not affect the outcome, based on what the WG desires.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: Frederic Detienne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:51:21 +0100

Hi Paul,

I am afraid you are mistaken. Yoav, Yaron, Pratima and I had a discussion about the draft's IPR back in Dublin in July 2008. We told back then that we would have rights released. The process takes its own time but as far as Pratima and I are concerned, we did due diligence.

Will you share your assumptions directly with us next time ?

thanks,

	fred

On 09 Mar 2010, at 18:37, Paul Hoffman wrote:

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 07:09:15 -0700

>I am afraid you are mistaken. Yoav, Yaron, Pratima and I had a discussion about the draft's IPR back in Dublin in July 2008. We told back then that we would have rights released. The process takes i…

Thank you.

>Will you share your assumptions directly with us next time ?

As WG co-chair, I need to trust the words and intentions of active WG contributors as much as I can. When the Cisco IPR statement for SIR came out, I was surprised, so I asked your co-author, Yoav Nir, about whether he had known about it. His response was that he had not known about it until after Cisco's recent IPR statement. I took him at his word.

To be clear: this is not a matter of which one of you is telling the truth. It is quite easy that one of you misunderstood the other because the discussion of SIR and QCD had gotten mixed up with the discussion of session resumption and maybe-related topics. There is, I believe, a chance that you told *me* about the pending patent and I forgot. I doubt that, but I also admit to having prejudices about IPR and so on that would cause me to have less-than-perfect memory. I cut you and Yoav the same slack I cut myself.

To be clear, part 2: the patent situation with SIR has not affected the WG's decision yet. There are plenty of companies whose generic IETF patent licenses are similar to those offered by Cisco for SIR. That is why my message to the WG informing them of Cisco's IPR statement said "Before reacting to this announcement, please review the IETF's IPR policy". Knee-jerk reactions to IPR statements can cause more damage in the IETF than IPR statements themselves.

I still stand by my statement that I would have preferred Cisco to issue the statement when we were discussing listing SIR in the charter in this current round: more information is always good. I apologize for saying "at least one of the co-authors on the named draft was not informed of the IPR"; I could have said "I have heard that at least one of the co-authors on the named draft was not informed of the IPR", which is a more accurate statement.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: Frederic Detienne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:16:59 +0100

Hi Paul,

I am still puzzled that you see fit to check in private with Yoav and in public with us.

For the records, at least one of the co-chairs (Yaron) was advised about the IPR at the same time as Yoav.

regards,

	fred

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From: Yaron Sheffer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:36:01 +0200

Hi Frederic,

this is correct, however we did not share this information because it 
was an individual submission at the time, and we expected Cisco to do 
the right thing, i.e. to inform the WG in a timely manner (and later, we 
simply forgot).

For some reason, Cisco chose to publish the IPR statement more than a 
year after the application was published by the patent office. It was 
Cisco's responsibility, and your personal responsibility, to follow IETF 
due process here.

Thanks,
	Yaron

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From: Pratima Sethi <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:49:27 +0530

Hi Yaron,

thanks for clarifying the situation.

The overall disclosure process still somewhat escaped us and we were 
unclear as to when such statements need to be published.

If we made a mistake, I hereby apologize; we know better now.

We mainly wanted to clear our names of any malicious intent. I am glad 
that memory has been restored.

regards,
- prati

On 3/22/2010 9:06 PM, Yaron Sheffer wrote:
> the right thing, i.e. to inform the WG in a timely manner (and later, 
> we simply forgot).
>
> Cisco's responsibility, and your personal responsibility, to follow 
> IETF due process here.
>
> Thanks,
>     Yaron
>
>>>> I am afraid you are mistaken. Yoav, Yaron, Pratima and I had a 
>>>> discussion about the draft's IPR back in Dublin in July 2008. We 
>>>> told back then that we would have rights released. The process 
>>>> takes its own time but as far as Pratima and I are concerned, we 
>>>> did due diligence.
>>>
>>> Thank you.
>>>
>>> As WG co-chair, I need to trust the words and intentions of active 
>>> WG contributors as much as I can. When the Cisco IPR statement for 
>>> SIR came out, I was surprised, so I asked your co-author, Yoav Nir, 
>>> about whether he had known about it. His response was that he had 
>>> not known about it until after Cisco's recent IPR statement. I took 
>>> him at his word.
>>>
>>> To be clear: this is not a matter of which one of you is telling the 
>>> truth. It is quite easy that one of you misunderstood the other 
>>> because the discussion of SIR and QCD had gotten mixed up with the 
>>> discussion of session resumption and maybe-related topics. There is, 
>>> I believe, a chance that you told *me* about the pending patent and 
>>> I forgot. I doubt that, but I also admit to having prejudices about 
>>> IPR and so on that would cause me to have less-than-perfect memory. 
>>> I cut you and Yoav the same slack I cut myself.
>>>
>>> To be clear, part 2: the patent situation with SIR has not affected 
>>> the WG's decision yet. There are plenty of companies whose generic 
>>> IETF patent licenses are similar to those offered by Cisco for SIR. 
>>> That is why my message to the WG informing them of Cisco's IPR 
>>> statement said "Before reacting to this announcement, please review 
>>> the IETF's IPR policy". Knee-jerk reactions to IPR statements can 
>>> cause more damage in the IETF than IPR statements themselves.
>>>
>>> I still stand by my statement that I would have preferred Cisco to 
>>> issue the statement when we were discussing listing SIR in the 
>>> charter in this current round: more information is always good. I 
>>> apologize for saying "at least one of the co-authors on the named 
>>> draft was not informed of the IPR"; I could have said "I have heard 
>>> that at least one of the co-authors on the named draft was not 
>>> informed of the IPR", which is a more accurate statement.
>>>
>>> --Paul Hoffman, Director
>>> --VPN Consortium
>>