Subject: [v6ops] Mail regarding draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat

From: Ronald Bonica <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:30:54 +0000

Folks,

Draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat is nearly ready for IESG approval. However, several IESG members, including me, are concerned that the WG has not yet considered the IPR declaration attached to this document.

So, I will wait one more week before approving this document. If you are concerned about the IPR declaration, please post a message describing your concerns to the list. If no such concerns are posted, I will approve the draft on January 17.

--------------------------
Ron Bonica
vcard:       www.bonica.org/ron/ronbonica.vcf

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From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:41:30 +0900

thanks for the flag, ron.  imiho

"Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory License to All Implementers with
Possible Royalty/Fee."

is a pretty much a show-stopper

randy

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From: "Rajiv Asati (rajiva)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:51:54 +0000

Oops. I agree with Randy to this being a no-go.

Cheers,
Rajiv

Sent from my Phone

On Jan 10, 2013, at 7:41 PM, "Randy Bush" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> v6ops mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/v6ops

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From: Cameron Byrne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:23:05 -0800

Hui, Deng and v6ops,

> is a pretty much a show-stopper

As you can see, we have a problem.  The IESG only has this final IPR
issue to resolve before publishing 464XLAT.

I see a few ways forward:

1.  China Mobile can grant free use for the benefit of the IETF and
the benefit of global IPv6 adoption and on-going evolution of the
Internet

2.  The IETF can move forward on the basis that the IPR claim is invalid*.

3.  Other options???

Regards,

CB

*I am not a lawyer, but the 464XLAT draft is just a combination of
existing technologies, none of which has IPR.  And, AFAIK [1], it is
not legitimate to patent a combination of existing technologies ....
which is what the IPR claim is.  NAT-PT goes back to the year 2000 as prior art.

So, simple analysis, says this patent is not valid.  Yet, we have this claim.

CB

[1] -- http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/combination-invention-patentable-patents-29891.html

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From: Joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:03:39 -0800

> 2.  The IETF can move forward on the basis that the IPR claim is invalid*.

So I'm curious given that there are china mobile participants in
softwire and certainly were in 2010 why this ipr disclosure would not
also be lodged against RFC 6147 which is the source of the method in the
first place.

I'm not in a position to evaluate the claim in the patent but I can
trace the history of the work back through the document series, and
elsewhere (in code that I used)at least back to 1999 with totd/faithd
for application/host proxy and totd/nat-pt for v6only hosts.

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From: Hui Deng <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:53:48 +0800

Cameron

As an individual participant of IETF, I am not the right people to answer
this,
it says the contact from the below link:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1730/

so I am cc to him now.

Best regards,

-Hui

2013/1/11 Cameron Byrne <[email-masked]>

> [1] --
> http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/combination-invention-patentable-patents-29891.html

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:55:42 +0000

> 2.  The IETF can move forward on the basis that the IPR claim is invalid*.

4. The IETF can move forward because its rules allow RAND conditions.

There are innumerable IETF standards with RAND disclosures against them.
We may not like it, but we do it all the time.

The summary of the claims (http://ip.com/patfam/en/43370583) is
very broad. Judging by that, if this disclosure was required, a disclosure
against draft-huang-behave-bih or RFC 6535 would also have been required.
However, the prior art for that goes back to RFC 2767, which is way before
this recent patent.

It isn't the IETF's job to determine whether a patent is valid. But if
we have a strong inclination to believe it's invalid, and the disclosure
in any case meets our rules, we can <shrug>. It's then for implementors
to decide what to do.

   Brian

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From: t.petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:56:08 +0000

Ron

I did look at it and it seems odd.

It describes a method of a v4 application generating a v4 DNS request on
an IPv6 host which translates the request into a v6 request across the
v6 network.  The v4 application then uses the v4 address obtained to
generate a v4 packet which the v6 host translates into a v6 packet for
transmission across the v6 network to a NAT device which translates the
packet into a v4 packet and sends it on to the v4 opposite end.

Obviously it is in the same ball park as 464 but seems not to overlap.
I note that the patent dates from 2009, the IPR disclosure was
raised against 464xlat-01, by Chen Gang of ChinaMobile, and has not been
raised against subsequent versions.  This is, to me, unusual - I usually
see the same claim raised against each and every version, up to and
including the RFC.

Based on this, my lay view is the patent is not relevant but, as you
always say, every one has to make up their own mind on this.

Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ronald Bonica" <[email-masked]>
To: "IPv6 Operations" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:30 PM
Subject: [v6ops] Mail regarding draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat

> Folks,
>
> Draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat is nearly ready for IESG approval. However,
several IESG members, including me, are concerned that the WG has not
yet considered the IPR declaration attached to this document.
>
> So, I will wait one more week before approving this document. If you
are concerned about the IPR declaration, please post a message
describing your concerns to the list. If no such concerns are posted, I
will approve the draft on January 17.

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 23:38:31 -0800

At 09:30 10-01-2013, Ronald Bonica wrote:
>describing your concerns to the list. If no such concerns are 
>posted, I will approve the draft on January 17.

The IPR disclosure at https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1730/ is not 
IETF-friendly [1].  It's an incentive to avoid draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat-08.

Regards,
-sm

1. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg76730.html

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From: Warren Kumari <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:24:52 -0500

> 4. The IETF can move forward because its rules allow RAND conditions.

Yes, the IETF *can* move forward, but *can* also decide that the IPR is annoying, discourages implementation, and makes possible risks for implements, and so it *can* (I believe) decide not to move forward.

Not saying that it should do this, but..
> We may not like it, but we do it all the time.

Yes, yes we do. We also sometimes decide to choose other, non-encumbered options.

> in any case meets our rules, we can <shrug>. It's then for implementors

IANAL, nor do I pretend to play one on TV, 
W

-- 
I had no shoes and wept.  Then I met a man who had no feet.  So I said, "Hey man, got any shoes you're not using?"

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From: Ronald Bonica <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:07:33 +0000

Randy,

Ack.

I will hold my DISCUSS on this document until the issue is resolved.

                                             Ron

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Randy Bush [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 7:41 PM
> To: Ronald Bonica
> Cc: IPv6 Operations
> Subject: Re: [v6ops] Mail regarding draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat
>

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:42:04 -0600

> in any case meets our rules, we can <shrug>. It's then for implementors
+ 1

Behcet

---

From: Cameron Byrne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 09:04:44 -0800

Wang Zhen Kai,

Can you please respond to the IETF v6ops group about your IPR concerns
for China Mobile regarding draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat ?

Is there a way for China Mobile to change the IPR terms?  Can China
Mobile clearly communicate which part of draft-ietf-v6ops-464xlat has
an infringement?

Making an IPR claim without any dialog reflects poorly on China
Mobile.  It would be very unfortunate for the IETF to terminate this
without a dialog.

Regards,

Cameron