ADMIN: IP Issue

From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
Subject: ADMIN: Agenda/Logistics -- 1/24 Telecon
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 23:22:55 -0500

> --- IP ISSUE:
> 
> ACTION pfps: determine status of IP on this issue
>   [Note: Peter PS and Deb McG have a patent relating (at least) to 
> procedural attachment.   We have asked them to prepare a statement 
> with respect to what they believe is Lucent's IP in this area.   Upon 
> completion of this JimH and DanC will have an ACTION to make sure  it 
> is appropriately addressed as per W3C policy and needs of this WG]

So it turns out that I was misremembering what the patent actually covers.
I'm sorry for any concern that I caused.

I had thought that the patent concerning procedural attachment covered
methods to determine what answer the procedure needs to return.  This would
impinge on just about any (reasonable) procedural attachment requirement.
However, this is not what is covered in the procedural attachment patent,
although it took the CLASSIC group quite a bit of head-scratching to figure
out how to specify the right answer.  

Instead the procedural attachment patent (5720008) is only concerned with
how to determine dependency information for procedural attachments.  There
are other ways of handling procedural attachment, so I deem this patent not
to be essential to procedural attachment, and thus not essential to any of
the discussion at the face-to-face.  (Others may disagree, of course.)

The other patent that Deborah mentioned (5974405) has to do with cutting
down on the amount of junk that explanation tends to produce.  I also deem
this patent not to be essential to any of the discussion that took place at
the face-to-face.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

PS: Those interested can look up both patents on the US Patent and
Trademark Office site (http://www.uspto.gov/patft/).

Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 14:07:55 UTC