IP issues involved in the Entity Seal and in other referenced standards

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Subject: IP issues involved in the Entity Seal and in other referenced standards




From: "John M. Greacen" <>
To: "Electronic Court Filing Technical Committeee" <>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 18:03:48 -0600














During the last conference call of the Member Section
Steering Committee, we had a lengthy discussion with OASIS staff concerning the
issue of “mismatched” TC IP policies.  John Messing identified the issue and
brought it to our attention.  The
Electronic Court Filing TC has long taken a very
strong position concerning IP interests in our specifications – we have
flat out stated that we will not include material in our specification if there
are proprietary IP rights attached to it.  Courts should not have to pay royalties
for the use of a technology standard, we have said.



The DSS TC
does not follow our IP approach.  They
use the standard OASIS RAND policy – that contributors
to a specification must agree to reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing of
their IP rights in a TC standard.  In fact, there have been several
statements of IP claims filed with the DSS TC concerning the Entity Seal specification.



This creates another layer of issues concerning the use or
requirement of the Entity Seal within Court Filing Blue.  The discussion during the Steering
Committee call suggested a number of avenues that we could pursue.  This is my memory and summary of that
discussion.  I invite other Steering
Committee members to amplify or correct the following:




 We will
     be citing to a large number of other OASIS standards in our Court Filing
     Blue specification – e.g., ebXML, UBL, Entity Seal.  We will make use of the WS-I
     standards.  We use the GJXDM.  We
     refer to ISO standards.  All of
     our work derives from the Schema standard of the W3C.
      In fact
     we have no clue what IP issues might lurk within or might have surfaced
     regarding all those standards.  We do know that all
     of the standards developing bodies responsible for creating them did not follow
     our IP approach, which is clearly not a universal standard.  However, we have all agreed to the
     importance of referencing and using other standards for constructing Court
     Filing Blue.  Modern electronic
     exchange processes depend completely on the use of such
     specifications.  It makes no
     sense to reinvent standards that work perfectly well already.  In fact, interoperability would be harmed if we did not use them.  The best that we can do in this
     situation is to acknowledge in our specification that we make no
     representations concerning the IP that might pertain to such standards and
     that users of our specification should find out for themselves if they
     have any concerns.





 We
     could review the existence of IP claims against every other standard that
     we use and either disclose such claims or refuse
     to use that standard because of the existence of such claims.  Remember, though, that an IP claim
     against a standard is no more than that – a claim.  It may actually be groundless.  And the
     fact that we do not find IP claims is hardly conclusive that there are
     none.  And
     we do not have the time or the resources for such research.





 We
     could fudge on our specification by using language such as “use a
     standard for locking down the complete contents of an electronic message using
     digital signature technology, such as the OASIS DSS
     TC’s Entity Seal specification currently
     in committee draft form.”





 We
     could make the use of other standards, or of other standards that we know
     have IP claims against them, non-normative with the use of language such
     as “implementers might consider using X”  or “we recommend the use of X,”
     with a disclaimer about the IP status of the specification.  





 We
     could attempt to obtain royalty free licensing commitments from the
     claimants against a particular specification that might figure prominently
     in our work, such as the DSS.  




I regret to inject yet another troublesome issue into what
is already a difficult, extensive and complicated agenda.  But it is
clearly there and we need to take it on.



I invite comments and suggestions.



John
M. Greacen

Greacen
Associates, LLC

HCR 



505-289-2164

505-289-2163
(fax)

505-780-1450
(cell)






















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