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Subject: Request to add agenda item to upcoming eNotary TC meeting
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
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