On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 22:06 +0200, Rainer Gerhards wrote: > Hi, > > I have been told that Huawei patents date back no longer than 2001. This > seems to confirm it: > > http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=2&u > =%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PG01&s1=HUAWEI&Page > =Next&OS=HUAWEI&RS=HUAWEI > > Also, David said "I believe the applicant is permitted to not disclose > the claims for > eighteen months.". Assuming this holds true, and speaking only of US > patents, this seems to mean that the patent in question can not date > back to later than 2004. > > In contrast, Google has a newsgroup post about syslog-ng and stunnel > from 1999: > > http://groups.google.com/group/comp.security.unix/browse_thread/thread/d > 125f044c5f8ba4a/6c87c15ddff26516?lnk=st&q=syslog-ng+stunnel&rnum=118#6c8 > 7c15ddff26516 > > I guess there are many more samples of prior art (e.g. during the > formation of this WG, some texts I wrote myself in 2004, many more > howtows pre-2000 and probably stunnel changelogs and installations).
The problem with the prior art quoted above is that the PTO prefers written and/or presented material, e.g. articles in magazines, or papers presented on conferences. Fortunately we have prior art in this category too: this one dates back to 2001, December from Linuxjournal, issue #92: http://linuxjournal.com/article/5476 So yes, the patent could probably be invalidated even if it is granted, however it costs money and needs someone to actually do it (any takers? :) I am somewhat undecided, I try to list the pros and cons whether to continue work on this matter: Pros: - we were working on this for ages now, and a standard is badly needed - Huawei probably needs the patent for its portfolio and does not care less with me, although Cisco might think differently :) Cons: - anyone could be threatened any time, license terms can be terminated and changed at will, even if it is currently reasonable, a patent is valid for _17_ years (yeah, that's 2023) - a granted patent could also mean that software that implements the patent cannot go into Linux distributions (at least to those which take this question seriously). As I see our first priority is to know more about the patent, but as that takes time, we should continue working with minimum effort, in the hope that the patent is not granted, is irrelevant or someone invalidates it. -- Bazsi _______________________________________________ Syslog mailing list Syslog@lists.ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/syslog
