OpenID 2.0 finalization progress

[Gabe Wachob]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: specs-bounces at openid.net [mailto:specs-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf
> Of Kevin Turner
> Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 1:34 PM
> To: specs
> Subject: Re: OpenID 2.0 finalization progress
> 
> On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 16:12 -0700, Johannes Ernst wrote:
> > [...] and after they had produced a spec, Rambus said "but we have
> > some patents". This lead to at least one lawsuit I believe.
> >
> > I have heard wildly diverging assessments on whether or not this
> > could happen here.
> 
> Ok, I'm looking for the devil's advocate here, so let's assume the
> worst.  Say we call the spec final now, and then sometime in the next
> forty days, a problem like that comes up.  What are the consequences of
> that?  Specifically, do any of the solutions to that hypothetical
> problem involve changing the spec?  In what way?

Typically, the community would choose to remove or change the part of the
spec which ostensibly infringed upon claims raised by a patentholder. This
could be major or it could be minor. Can't tell until someone raises a
patent claim. 

> The way I understand it, right now one of two things happens:
> 
> 1) Things go more-or-less smoothly now.  The IPR policy may get tinkered
> with a little bit during the review period but this does not influence
> the technical specification.
> 
> 2) The sky falls and we decide that there is no IPR policy that can
> possibly cover the current specification, so we must change the
> specification.  Given our track record at publishing new drafts, this
> means that we wouldn't be final until _at least_ Q1 2008, if not Q2.

The third possibility is the real concern (that Johannes is referring to):

3) the community calls the spec final and a contributor raises a potential
patent infringement issue, and since the community has already implemented
and deployed 2.0, the patent owner has more leverage because the costs of
"engineering around" the claims in the patent have gone way up because of
already-deployed software. 

I'm not saying #3 is likely - but that's the scenario we are trying to
prevent. 

	-Gabe