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RE: [Asrg] Seeking volunteers for C/R documents (was: Washington Post: Earthlink to Deploy a Challenge-Response System for )



> -----Original Message-----
> From: asrg-admin@ietf.org [mailto:asrg-admin@ietf.org]On Behalf Of Paul
> Judge
>
> Yes, a BCP for designing and deploying C/R systems would be useful.
> Additionally, a proposal for a C/R protocol would be useful. This would
> permit interaction between different C/R systems and allow
> integration into
> MTAs and MUAs.
>
> Does anyone have a set of thoughts in either of these two directions that
> they would like to put together and move forward?
>




MailBlocks, Inc. (www.mailblocks.com) claims to have patents on C/R systems 
for stopping spam AND they sued Earthlink and other companies for use of 
C/R according to a New York Times article 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/business/08SPAM.html):



---[quotes]----

"A Silicon Valley start-up yesterday sued EarthLink, the big Internet 
service provider, saying that EarthLink's latest technology to block 
unwanted e-mail marketing, or spam, violates two of the start-up's patents."



"MailBlocks, which is based in Los Altos, Calif., has been granted two 
patents related to its method of verifying senders, a technology called 
challenge response."



"MailBlocks, in fact, had already filed suit against three companies — Spam 
Arrest of Seattle, DigiPortal Software of Sanford, Fla., and MailFrontier 
of Palo Alto, Calif."

---[quotes]----



Section 10.3.2 of RFC 2026 states as follows:



----[snip]----



10.3.2. Standards Track Documents

   (A)  Where any patents, patent applications, or other proprietary

      rights are known, or claimed, with respect to any specification on

      the standards track, and brought to the attention of the IESG, the

      IESG shall not advance the specification without including in the

      document a note indicating the existence of such rights, or

      claimed rights.  Where implementations are required before

      advancement of a specification, only implementations that have, by

      statement of the implementors, taken adequate steps to comply with

      any such rights, or claimed rights, shall be considered for the

      purpose of showing the adequacy of the specification.

----[snip]----



Now we are not creating documents on the standards track but nevertheless, 
I think we need to clarify the patents/intellectual rights issues 
surrounding C/R systems. Perhaps we should solicit a comment from 
MailBlocks and the IRTF/IETF?



Yakov



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yakov Shafranovich / <research@solidmatrix.com>

SolidMatrix Research, a division of SolidMatrix Technologies, Inc.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"One who watches the wind will never sow, and one who keeps his eyes on

the clouds will never reap" (Ecclesiastes 11:4)

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