Request to add agenda item to upcoming eNotary TC meeting

[John Messing <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

I respectfully request that an additional item be added to the agenda of
the meeting scheduled for this Thursday, 17 April 2008 at 01:00pm -
02:00pm ET, which is the mutual cancellation of the royalty free license
that was granted by me to the TC for the development of the symmetric
signature profile. 

I further request that this item be joined with the proposal from the
consultant to work on an xml dsig (digital signature) profile
architecture and that it be considered early in the meeting as I may
have to leave early for other reasons.

The reason for the request is:

1. The grant of the royalty free license was predicated upon the
performance of the consulting contract as it was written and executed by
the parties. In that contract as a first step the symmetric signature
profile was to be developed quickly and early on so that its benefits
could be distributed early to the community of enotary developers, with
the advantages of --

a. eliminating the "tax" upon end users of having to purchase a digital
certificate annually in order to enotarize documents, as had been tried
unsuccessfully in Pennsylvania by regulation in 2007, as I believe Marc
Aronson keenly knows and can corroborate; and

b. eliminating the threat from "ghost" patents developed by Arcanvs in
the 1990's which presented a possibility that end users could be taxed a
second time by patent trolling companies if they used such technologies,
which was contrary to the IPR policy of the TC, and was aptly pointed
out by Rolly Chambers to North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine
Marshall in his June 16, 2006 letter in which he stated: "Work on a
LegalXML Member Section digital signature profile for PKI digital
signatures also is hampered by the existence of two U.S. patents on this
technology for enotarization purposes, the status and ownership of which
is unclear. By their charters, technical committees within the LegalXML
Member Section are prohibited from approving standards that are
encumbered by patent rights unless the intellectual property owner
provides a royalty free license for essential claims that are needed to
implement an open standard."

The goal of the royalty-free license for the symmetric signature profile
was to cut to the chase and develop quickly a symmetric key profile that
could simply, elegantly, and freely (without charge) enable
e-notarization.

The Steering Committee graciously provided funding for the effort and a
contract for a consultant to do the work was entered, with specific
tasks and target dates. The strategy was then to expand this initial
body of work to include other signature profiles and develop a
comprehensive enotary 1.0 standard that enabled interoperability, and
contract provisions provided accordingly, with target dates.

Unfortunately, despite the contractual commitment the consultant changed
his mind and decided he did not want to proceed that way. The TC
leadership has not seen its way to following through on its initial
vision, with the result that the project implementation dates are
grossly overdue and a new proposal, based once again on digital
signature technology, which will likely perpetuate the problems noted in
a and b above notwithstanding the status of xml dsig as an open standard
in non-notary settings, has been put forth in its place.

If the TC is not willing to move forward on the basis upon which the
royalty free license was granted, then I respectfully request that the
royalty free license be mutually canceled. It took considerable time,
effort, money and personal sacrifice to develop the patent rights, the
technology has been successfully deployed on several occasions in
non-notary settings, the patent rights have economic value, and if the
royalty-free license to the TC is not matched by actions consistent with
the contract commitment to develop the technology in a notary setting so
that its benefits can be speedily enjoyed by the end user notaries
without charge, I would like to have the IP rights released from the
royalty-free license commitment.

Thank you.

Very truly yours,


John Messing