[OpenID] IPR claims over OpenID 1.1

Recordon, David drecordon at verisign.com
Sat Jul 21 23:10:20 UTC 2007


I've also now added a section to http://openid.net/specs.bml discussing
IPR, quoting below.

Intellectual Property

The OpenID community strongly believes that all finalized OpenID
specifications must be free to implement and unencumbered from patent
licensing. From the beginning of the OpenID project, this sentiment has
been expressed in the statement, "Nobody should own this. Nobody's
planning on making any money from this. The goal is to release every
part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there's no
money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the
community as a whole if something like this exists, and we're all a part
of the community."

Currently being led by the OpenID Foundation, work is underway to
develop an intellectual property rights policy and process for various
OpenID specification related activities moving forward. The Foundation
has actively engaged participants from AOL, Microsoft, SUN Microsystems,
Symantec, VeriSign, Yahoo! and a number of other companies and
individuals to develop this policy. Current information about progress
can be found on the wiki and it discussion should occur on
legal at openid.net.

Additionally, to help alleviate potential concerns before a policy is in
place, the following companies have issued non-assertion covenants
covering various Finalized Specifications.
Date			Who			Patents	Auth 1.1
SREG 1.0	Yadis 1.0
May 21, 2007	Sun Microsystems	ALL		X
X	 
June 18, 2007	VeriSign		NC		X
X		X
NC - Necessary Claims

-----Original Message-----
From: general-bounces at openid.net [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net] On
Behalf Of Eric Norman
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2007 4:09 PM
To: OpenID - General
Subject: Re: [OpenID] IPR claims over OpenID 1.1


On Jul 14, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Peter Williams wrote:

> Can any point to me threads of email where IPR claims, half-claims,  
> intimations of claims, gossip about claims, talk about claims or other

> communications addressing any and all issues about possible legal  
> encumbrances on OpenID 1.1 are discussed, please?

How about the IPR Policy section of the OpenID Wiki?

    http://openid.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

> I'm going to predict that Microsoft legal and Microsoft Passport  
> service is going to play a very interesting legalistic role here,  
> since Passport been designed and operational for so long, uses the  
> flow pattern of what SAML folk would call sp-initiated webSSO, and  
> really only differs from OpenID 1.1 flow pattern (and SAML  
> sp-initiated SSO patterns) on the issue of whether assertion makers  
> shall be centralized or de-centralized.

I haven't actually seen the claims in any patents, but I'll ask anyway.
Has a patent really been issued where someone claims to have invented  
the
flow pattern itself?  It sure would seem to me that that fails the non-
obvious criteria, and probably the newness criteria too.  But as a lot
of folks would say, the patent office really doesn't have a clue about
what's obvious and what isn't in the software field.  And they were
recently told so (albeit in another field; accelerator pedals, yet!) by
the U.S. Supreme Court. So maybe there is such a claim.

Regardless, the distinction between centralized and de-centralized may
be enough to make it sufficiently different to be non-infringing (but
I still wouldn't say non-obvious).

>  From my early phase investigation work into OpenID, OpenID seems in  
> contrast to be starting out on the phase of a patent wars, associated

> FUD campaigns expressed in behaviors such as offering developer  
> covenants, and the usual 2-3 year period of various forms of legal  
> fencing.

Indeed, the Blanket Reciprocity section certainly seems like a bunch of
macho talk, doesn't it?  I wonder, if it actually comes to that (a  
counter-
suit), what weapons the OpenID community thinks it has to fight with.
Someone else will be waving an issued patent in front of the judge; what
does the OpenID community have to wave in front of the judge?

Rant:  a lot of this IPR stuff is crap and just silly.  There seems to
be consensus that everyone wants to reach the goal of "an identity layer
for the Internet".  That seem like enough incentive right there to
advance the sciences and arts.  Why add the IPR stuff which may actually
hamper such advancemment?  If you still don't get my point, lookie here

http://ejnorman.blogspot.com/2007/05/intellectual-property-is- 
oxymoron.html

By the way; as long as I'm on the subject.  I do want to apologize to
David Recordon and others for taking Kaliya's poster about voting with
your feet a bit too literally and stomping out of the discussion at IIW
in May.  What I will say in public is that it wasn't anything personal
about David, and it wasn't even the particular topic being discussed.
It was the culmination of a lot of things that I had experienced and I
guess I just got too fed up.  So I'm sorry.

Eric Norman
http://ejnorman.blogspot.com

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