All, As a general FYI, IBM just filed a blanket IPR disclosure [1] relating to the activity of the Atompub WG. Before any misinformation starts going around about this I thought it would be a good idea to give y'all a heads up.
As of right now IBM has NO KNOWN patents or applications for patents that read on the Atom specs. However, as is well known, IBM has a massive IPR portfolio and it would take a very long time and cost a lot of money for us to dig through 'em all to know for certain. Rather than spend the time and energy doing that, IBM has agreed to a blanket commitment to Royalty Free terms for any IPR that reads on the Standards Track specifications produced by the atompub Working Group. Again, I want to reiterate that there are no patents we are currently aware of nor are there any applications in progress that we are currently aware of. There are basically two reasons we are doing this: 1. We think the Atom Syndication Format and the Atom Publishing Protocol are really important. 2. We want anyone to be able to implement Atom without any fear of patent hell (and we're really hoping that others agree). I must add that I am not a IPR expert by any stretch of the imagination. If you have questions, please direct them to me and I will answer what I can or I will forward them on to our IP Law experts. - James [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/ipr_detail_show.cgi?&ipr_id=804
