Re: review of DK and IIM patent licenses

[MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com>]

I have not read the patents, so I have no idea what these apply to and I
suspect it's better that I shouldn't know.

Daniel Quinlan <quinlan@pathname.com> wrote:
> Here is the IIM license:
>   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/cisco-ipr-draft-fenton-identified-mail-00.txt

This contaminates other software, by terminating for any patent action
against Cisco about anything. It even seems to contaminate hardware!

> Here is the DK license:
>   http://domainkeys.sourceforge.net/license/patentlicense1-0.html

"You agree not to assert against Yahoo!, or any other DomainKeys
Developer, a patent infringement claim against any Implementation
("Implementation IP Claim")."  To avoid contaminating other software,
should that read "this Implementation and derived Implementations"
or similar?

There's also a choice of venue in 3.8. Choice of law is fine, but
choice of venue is contraversial.

Please press both of these patent holders for Royalty-Free perpetual
global transferable licensing if they wish these things to be usable by
free software.

Software patents are bunk. Patents are intended for inventions, not the
exploited properties themselves (of which algorithms are copyrightable
expressions).  Please campaign against their abuse by Cisco, Yahoo! and
others and seek to remove algorithms from patentability in your country.