Subject: [Enum] My prior art published in august 2000 to abusive US Patent 6, 347, 085

From: "Philippe Verdy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:07:03 +0200

I was the personal author of a discussion we had on the ICANN discussion
list (during its reform in its “At Large study” and election process) about
the convergence of telephone and Internet

You (IETF, and ITU) seem to have problems with US Patent 6,347,085 that was
disclosed in 2002.

But the basic concept behind the claimed apparatus, and the way ENUM was
finally adopted in 2002 was exactly what I proposed in the public ICANN
discussion list in 2000.

Proof:

If people are making money from my idea that I filed in a public discussion
at ICANN for free, then they are abusing my right. I want to give you a
possible proof that the claims in this patent against the whole ENUM project
that was really finalized in a working model in 2002 may be wrong, because
it covers prior art.

I described an example with a French phone number like +33.1.23456789 that
would be simply managed by:

* Creating a root subzone (I just gave .phone as an example, but the IETF
proposed .e164.arpa, which is equivalent)

* giving the authority of this zone to the ITU who is in charge of the
portable international phone numbering plan.

* making sure that the phone number is written in international form, and
removing + and all separators.

* reversing the digits

* separating each digit by dots, so creating as many zubzones as necessary
to match the numbering plan delegations

* and having each country manage its own registry for the numbers they have
in charge, with the ITU…

My proposal was simpler thanFrom [email-masked] Mon Apr 23 09:22:06 2007
From: "Philippe Verdy" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:07:03 +0200
Organization: Ordinateur Personnel
Subject: [Enum] 
	My prior art published in august 2000 to abusive US Patent 6,
	347, 085
Reply-To: [email-masked]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
I was the personal author of a discussion we had on the ICANN discussion
list (during its reform in its “At Large study” and election process) about
the convergence of telephone and Internet

You (IETF, and ITU) seem to have problems with US Patent 6,347,085 that was
disclosed in 2002.

But the basic concept behind the claimed apparatus, and the way ENUM was
finally adopted in 2002 was exactly what I proposed in the public ICANN
discussion list in 2000.

Proof:

If people are making money from my idea that I filed in a public discussion
at ICANN for free, then they are abusing my right. I want to give you a
possible proof that the claims in this patent against the whole ENUM project
that was really finalized in a working model in 2002 may be wrong, because
it covers prior art.

I described an example with a French phone number like +33.1.23456789 that
would be simply managed by:

* Creating a root subzone (I just gave .phone as an example, but the IETF
proposed .e164.arpa, which is equivalent)

* giving the authority of this zone to the ITU who is in charge of the
portable international phone numbering plan.

* making sure that the phone number is written in international form, and
removing + and all separators.

* reversing the digits

* separating each digit by dots, so creating as many zubzones as necessary
to match the numbering plan delegations

* and having each country manage its own registry for the numbers they have
in charge, with the ITU…

My proposal was simpler than having to parse phone numbers and discovering
howmany digits are needed to route a call to any network, because the DNS is
flexible enough. I also proposed using dynamic DNS.

Although my message was short, and not the complete document that would make
the policy needed to run the ENUM registry. All the core concepts were
exposed in my message. In fact, even the simplified alternative (without
reversing the whole number and with less dots) was also described. I gave
the choice…

See ICANN discussion archives (my message is signed there, by my name and my
(still valid) personal email address, and I was registered at ICANN as a
valid subscriber at this time, for the ongoing ICANN reform):

http://forum.icann.org/adhoc/

More precisely this message:

http://forum.icann.org/adhoc/39948C41000000DA.html

posted on August 11, 2000 (so weeks before the US Patent was filed in
September 2000)

Username: 

verdy_p <http://forum.icann.org/adhoc/verdy_p.html>  

Date/Time: 

Fri, August 11, 2000 at 11:29 PM GMT

Browser: 

Microsoft Internet Explorer V5.01 using Windows 98 

Score: 

5

Subject: 

Convergence can be done within a DNS

Message: 

 

Assume you want to translate a phone number to an IP address (chould it be
IPv4 or IPv6), this can already be done using DNS:
Example: you want to translate a phone number in France, say:
  +33.1.23456789
You could think it can be done by requesting a domain name like:
  123456789.33.phone
(This assumes that phone is a TLD, in which each international phone code is
registered and operated as a sub-TLD, and then the number is solved
appropriately within that country registry.)
However there are issues, such that renumbering schemes (how many digits
have to be searched ?)
Another solution is to use the reversed phone number and cutting phone
number in individual digits:
  9.8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1.3.3.phone
That way, you do not have to parse the phone number to find the minimum set
of digits that successfully resolves a domain name, and the numering plan
can be changed by distributing sub-DNS in each country. Because this domain
name is algorithmicly implement, it lacks of readability. So each country
could decide on the usual format to give to phone numbers so that they can
be easily parsed.
Requesting the DNS could then return additional information, such that the
kind of information that can be returned by reversed phone number searchs,
however there are some privacy issues that should restrict the information
returned by DNS requests. 

What I mean here, is that converging numbering plans to IP is not necessary,
because this process can be automated within dynamic DNS servers operated by
country phone registries and ITU. 

So it seems that the US Patent applicant just copied exactly what I said in
the ICANN discussion list, and secretly filed a patent with many abusive
verbose claims, and that patent that was only disclosed in 2002 when the
ENUM project was made concrete, and they want to make money with an idea
that they did not have and was publicly disclosed to ICANN before them.

I won’t claim a patent myself (I can’t pay an advocate for that to defend in
US), but at least us Patent 6,347,085 can be proven invalid !

Philippe Verdy.

[email-masked]

At the time of publishing I was living at this address:

17 rue Jean Dussourd,

92600 Asnières-sur-Seine,

France

Now I live here :

15 rue Jean Perrin, Appt. 7

79000 Niort

France

My current phone number: +33(0)5 47 73 67 12

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