RE: [security-services] Liberty IPR Issues (was: Liberty ID-FF 1. 2submission to the SSTC)

[Michael McIntosh <mikemci@us.ibm.com>]

Conor P. Cahill wrote on 12/03/2003, 01:49 PM:
>
>Not being one of the contributors of the specs to the SSTC, but being 
>one of the contributors to the original specifications and being one of 
>the companies who has IP in the ID-FF, we have offered reciprical-RF 
>terms on all of the stuff in the liberty specifications.  We plan to do 
>the same here in the SSTC once we see what it actually is that gets done.
>
>However, I would be strongly resistant to making a statement that says 
>"anything you do in the SSTC will be granted IPR to any IP owned by AOL" 
>unless I can first see exactly what we are talking about.

Would you be resistant to making a statement to the effect that Liberty 
members would commit to grant to SAML implementations the same licensing 
terms granted to Liberty implementations, limited to the same set of IP 
necessary to implement Liberty?

No one is asking for better terms than are offered for Liberty 
implementations. No one is asking anyone to commit to licensing IP they 
don't control. No one is asking for a commitment on any IP beyond that 
isn't already committed to for Liberty implementations. 

Assuming that you will not make that commitment - can you say what you 
think the TC might do that would cause you to not offer these same terms? 
At least then we can try to avoid doing a lot of work on a specification 
that might not be useful.

I know you have said that you think I am asking these questions to 
increase the level of FUD. Until the most recent meeting I (really 
naively) thought that the IPR being discussed applied to the this TC. It 
wasn't until the gentleman from Sun joined the call and seemed to end all 
of his sentences with "for Liberty implementations" that I thought to ask 
about SAML implementations. My level of FUD increased at the meeting 
because of the way the answers to Hal's questions were phrased.

Perhaps others feel more comfortable with the undefined IPR around these 
submissions.

I know some have said that this situations is comparable with the WSS 
submission - regardless of the clarity of the text, my understanding from 
talking with some of those involved is that they believed that they were 
granting RF licensing for implementations of the OASIS version of WSS.

Thanks,
Mike