On Tue, 25 May 2004, Mipam wrote:
> On Mon, 24 May 2004, Michael Hertrick wrote:
> > http://news.com.com/Cisco+to+patent+security+fix/2100-1002_3-5216494.html?tag=cd.lede
> >
> > Apparently Cisco is trying to patent a RST-ACK mechanism for TCP.  Their
> 
> The patent statement is here:
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/cisco-ipr-draft-ietf-tcpm-tcpsecure.txt
> 
> the only thing is if you come back and sue Cisco for IPR infringment
> then cisco can use this patent against you. Btw, NetBSD implemented this
> draft (the fix that is) as far as i know.

I think Cisco deserves some bad press as a result of this. Working 'with
the community' to develop a fix, and release an RFC as a urgent change
to the stack - then declaring it patentable - is deceitful.

It does cause an additional amount of work for people who choose to
build on top of NetBSD platforms - to keep track of the Patent sticks
they can be clubbed with. Perhaps it should be #ifdef'd so that people
could avoid using the code.

Perhaps, in future, the IETF should refuse to work with Cisco on issues
like this one, given this example of how they can be expected to behave.

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville