I congratulated and comisserated with Rob in private, but
let me hereby thank and congratulate him in public - this is exactly the sort of
licensing mechanism that I would like OASIS to encourage licensors to
use!
-Gabe
From: Philpott, Robert
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006
5:15 PM
To:
Subject: [chairs]
FW: A change to the RSA licensing process for SAML
implementers
Hi folks – I just
posted this to the SSTC distribution list (as well as letting folks at Liberty
Alliance know).
Rob
Philpott
Senior Consulting
Engineer
RSA
Security Inc.
Tel:
781-515-7115
Mobile: 617-510-0893
Fax:
781-515-7020
Email:
I-name: =Rob.Philpott
From:
Philpott, Robert
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 7:30
PM
To:
Cc: Philpott, Robert
Subject: A change to the RSA licensing
process for SAML implementers
Hi
all,
As you all should know, RSA
Security’s IP declaration for SAML described a licensing process that required
downloading a license from the RSA Security web site, getting it signed, and
mailing it back to RSA’s legal office. I’ve been working on getting this
changed for quite a long time (months) and finally achieved success last
week! We have now switched to the common “defensive suspension” style of
licensing, for example like that used by AOL for
SAML.
I notified OASIS of the change on
27-April. I’ve been waiting for them to post the new statement to the
SSTC IPR page before announcing it, but since there’s been a bit of discussion
on IP licensing (mentioning SAML) on the chairs list and over at Liberty, we
concluded we should go ahead and update everyone.
The text of the new statement is
attached below. As I said, it should be posted to the IPR page very soon
(anyone at OASIS listening?)…
Cheers,
Rob
Philpott
Senior Consulting
Engineer
RSA
Security Inc.
Tel: 781-515-7115
Mobile: 617-510-0893
Fax:
781-515-7020
Email:
I-name: =Rob.Philpott
To:
OASIS Executive Director
From:
Robert P. Nault, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, RSA Security Inc.
Date:
April 27, 2006
Subject:
Intellectual Property Rights Statement
In
previous correspondence dated December 6, 2004, January 20, 2003 and April 22,
2002, RSA Security Inc. ("RSA") disclosed that it is the assignee of U.S.
Patent Nos. 6,085,320 and 6,189,098, both entitled "Client/Server
Protocol for Proving Authenticity" and U.S. Patent Nos. 5,922,074
and 6,249,873, both entitled “Method of and Apparatus for Providing Secure
Distributed Directory Services and Public Key Infrastructure” (collectively,
the “RSA Patents”). At that
time, RSA believed that these four patents could be relevant to practicing
certain operational modes of the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language
(“SAML”) specifications. In the correspondence, RSA offered to grant
non-exclusive, royalty-free licenses on a non-discriminatory basis for the RSA
Patents.
In the
interest of encouraging deployment of SAML-based technologies, RSA hereby
covenants, free of any royalty, that it will not assert any claims in the RSA
Patents which may be essential to the SAML standard v1.0, 1.1 and 2.0
(hereinafter “NECESSARY CLAIMS”) against any other entity with respect to any
implementation conforming to the SAML standard v1.0, 1.1 and/or 2.0.
This covenant shall become null and void with respect to any entity that
asserts, either directly or indirectly (e.g. through an affiliate), any patent
claims or threatens or initiates any patent infringement suit against RSA
and/or its subsidiaries or affiliates. The revocation of the covenant
shall extend to all prior use by the entity asserting the
claim.
RSA
will continue to honor existing license agreements for the RSA Patents and
will continue to offer as an option to interested third parties the same
licensing arrangement described in our previous correspondence. (The
license agreement, along with instructions for obtaining and completing the
license, are available on RSA’s website www.rsasecurity.com.)
RSA welcomes
comments on this statement and looks forward to further collaboration with
OASIS
