Subject: [Enum] patent on ENUM

From: Andrew Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:49:46 -0500

As anybody run across US Pat. 6,347,085?  I looked on the IETF IPR  
page and there are no disclosures.

The claims in this patent certainly seem to illustrate how ENUM works.

Should a third party disclosure be filed?

-andy

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From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:10:07 +0000

> Should a third party disclosure be filed?

I don't think it's needed.

The only important thing in the patent is the actual claims, starting on
column 18, page 17. There are 17 claims, but the important ones are claims
1 and 11 - the remainder are variations on these and so subsidiary to them.

Claim 1 has two key elements that we need to consider:
(1) Connecting a computer on a packet-switched network to the PSTN using
    a gateway device.

Thus it does not apply to any system that doesn't work through a gateway
device. That immediately rules out many uses of ENUM, and makes it clear
that it's the gateway device manufacturers/operators that need to worry
about the patent.

(2) "generating a telephone number domain name [...] by reversing the order
    in which the segments of the telephone number were received without
    modifying the sequence of numbers within each segment"

This second element is not the way in which ENUM works. Even discounting
the question of which root domain is used, let's look at my telephone
number:

    ENUM:   8.3.1.6.5.9.4.8.0.2.4.4.root-domain
    Patent: 6138.8495.20.44.root-domain
    or [1]: 84956138.20.44.root-domain
    or [2]: 6138.495.208.44.root-domain

This is different enough (even if there isn't a prior art issue) that it
can be (IMHO) ignored.

Claim 11 is for a complete software product to carry out the steps
including connecting to the gateway. Thus the same differences apply and
again don't concern us.

He has *NOT* claimed a patent on converting telephone numbers to domain
names.

[1] The patent is unclear whether 8-digit numbers should be split into two
fours. It talks about "exchange data" in column 12, but London telephone
numbers aren't split into exchanges like that.

[2] A lot of people wrongly believe that my area code is 0208.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <[email-masked]>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <[email-masked]>  | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
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THUS plc            |                            |

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From: Andrew Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:19:36 -0500

Clive,

Thanks for your response.  Comments in-line:

> that it's the gateway device manufacturers/operators that need to  

Using ENUM to get a SIP URI which is a gateway seems to me that it  
might be a common use of ENUM, though I have actually not seen setups  
that do it.

> This is different enough (even if there isn't a prior art issue)  

Thanks for pointing this out.  I, for some reason, was thinking each  
segment was only one digit long.

-andy

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From: [email-masked] (Scott Bradner)
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:39:29 -0500 (EST)

> segment was only one digit long.

even if that were the case RFC 1486 is rather good prior art
(which should have been cited to the patent office since someone
(patent exanminer or inventor) cited another RFC (RFC 1789)

Scott