The MPLS WG Archive

[Curtis Villamizar <curtis@workhorse.fictitious.org>]

In message <20020417134506.17611.qmail@fe170.worldonline.dk>, "Per F Hansen" wr
ites:
> Hello 
> 
> I saw an email from you 22/2-1999 related to the IBM
> mpls patent claim discussions. 
> 
> Can you or any other give an update about what has
> happened since. Do people pay IBM a fee, or have the
> MPLS stadards been changed to come around IBM, or
> were there practically a technical implementation way
> to come around IBM and still be MPLS compliant. 
> 
> Per


I don't think anyone pays IBM a fee for patents related to MPLS.  I
don't even know if they have any.

At the time I think we were speculating on what IBM might be claiming
to be patentable since they had made an intellectual property
statement but had no patent.  One can only speculate when someone
claims to have something in the application stage.  I am extremely
familiar with the early IBM discussions that preceded ARIS and
initiated much of the discussion as part of the NSFNET partnership.  I
also discussed ideas publicly, my own ideas, on the IETF int-serv
mailing list prior to anything coming out of Cisco, IBM, or Ipsilon.
If any patent related to forwarding comes of the IBM work I may still
have email that precedes the public discussions that would very likely
invalidate it.  If they patent something related to their LDP work,
that might be another story, depending on the nature of the patent.
Early public discussion of signaling assumed a model more similar to
LDP than RSVP/TE or CR-LDP, so even LDP is probably safe.

Is there a specific patent number that you are concerned about or are
you just asking what became of this discussion?

Curtis