[idn] Walid inc. patent news.

[Marc Blanchet <Marc.Blanchet@viagenie.qc.ca>]

On March 20th 2001, the wg co-chairs sent a request to Walid inc. about the 
6,182,148 patent. (original mail is attached). Walid inc. acknowledged the 
reception of the email on the same day. Walid inc. responded on April 13th 
2001 with a series of questions that were answered by one of the IDNA 
authors. One wg co-chair acknowledged to Walid inc. that this IDNA author's 
email was answering the essence of the Walid inc. questions. Since then, we 
haven't received any new message or statement from Walid inc.

Marc & James.

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Blanchet [mailto:Marc.Blanchet@viagenie.qc.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 3:35 PM
To: dhawkins@walid.com
Cc: jseng@pobox.org.sg; narten@raleigh.ibm.com;
erik.nordmark@eng.sun.com; briansp@walid.com; mwelter@walid.com
Subject: walid idn request


Hi,
	from http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/WALID-IDN, you are designated as the
person responsible for IP issues at Walid. At the IETF idn wg meeting held
monday march 20th 2001 in Minneapolis, the wg expressed concerns about the
fact that the current orientation of the working group which is documented
in the a few documents (draft-ietf-idn-idna-01.txt,
draft-ietf-idn-nameprep-03.txt, and others) could be covered by the US
patent 6,182,148 owned by Walid.  The wg strongly feels that the current IP
statement sent to the IETF is not enough clear to assess the fair
availability of the use of the patent if the wg documents go forward in the
standard track.  The wg feels that we cannot promote the current documents
to the RFC level without a clearer and more open IP statement from Walid.
	As you know, time is the essence.  We do feel an urgent need to have
another statement from Walid that it either:
- keeps with the current IP statement, which is unsatisfactory for the
working group
- have a new IP statement that the working group will find acceptable to
promote the documents to the RFC level.

	You should understand that this request is coming from the IETF idn
working group through our position of IETF idn wg co-chair, and not as
individuals or as our companies representatives.

	Could you please have an expressed attention to this message? Could we
expect some news from Walid in the coming few weeks?

Regards,

Marc Blanchet, co-chair of IETF idn wg
James Seng, co-chair of IETF idn wg.