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

From: "Philippe Verdy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:22:01 +0200

Note that my message in the ICANN discussion list even predates RFC 2916
which was the first document published in a standard track in September 2000
by the IETF, and this old RFC is exactly what I described in August 2000.
It's strange that I was not referenced in that RFC. Just before that, the
last RFC was 2806 in April 2000 (URLs for telephone calls). But it did not
describe the DNS registration system, only the syntax for several URI
schemes ("tel:", "modem:", "fax:") using the standard E.164 syntax for
specifying the phone number part.

Philippe Verdy.

Note that my message in the ICANN discussion list even predates RFC 2916
which was the first document published in a standard track in September 2000
by the IETF, and this old RFC is exactly what I described in August 2000.
It's strange that I was not referenced in that RFC. Just before that, the
last RFC was 2806 in April 2000 (URLs for telephone calls). But it did not
describe the DNS registration system, only the syntax for several URI
schemes ("tel:", "modem:", "fax:") using the standard E.164 syntax for
specifying the phone number part.

Philippe Verdy.

_______________________________________________
enum mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/enum

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From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:04:21 +0200

The first draft was released in 1998, under the name draft-faltstrom- 
e164-00.txt. I am sorry if you feel I forgot to mention you as  
someone that gave input to RFC 2916, but we must (simply) have talked  
beside each other.

I.e. the first published IETF document on the matter was draft- 
faltstrom-e164-00.txt released December 1998.

    Patrik

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From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:25:59 +0200

At 04:04 PM 4/23/2007, Patrik Fältström wrote:
>The first draft was released in 1998, under the 
>name draft-faltstrom- e164-00.txt. I am

Actually the prior art goes back to the drafts developed by Karl Malamud
and Marshall T Rose in 1993.  See RFC 1530 et seq.   It was instantiatiated
on tpc.int and has been in continuous use ever since.  This is were
the real innovation and "art" first arose.   Malamad-Rose created the
"art" and placed it in the public domain at that time.   The art here is the
use of a IP-based DNS resolver mechanism for E.164 numbers to reach
a network terminal device.

--tony

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From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:06:00 +0200

On 23 apr 2007, at 16.25, Tony Rutkowski wrote:

>> The first draft was released in 1998, under the name draft- 
>> faltstrom- e164-00.txt. I am
>

Correct. I was "just" pointing out the history of RFC2916, without  
talking about prior art to that RFC. Many documents where written  
about E-164 and DNS. This tpc.int was probably the first  
implementation that was live world-wide.

    Patrik

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:10:34 +0000

> a network terminal device.

	One might consider RFC 1183...  
	that work was key to the development of the TPC.INT idea
	that Carl and Marshall built.

--bill

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From: "Philippe Verdy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:19:57 +0200

> De : Patrik Fältström [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Cc : [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Objet : Re: [Enum] RE: My prior art published in august 2000 to abusive US
> Patent 6, 347, 085
> 

I didnot want to make money with this. Because I really thought that what I
gave online on the ICANN mailing list was quite basic, and correctly
describing what was finally published by the IETF in its RFC.

Regarding filing dates, it's possible, because I don't know much about the
US patent system, I only swathe publication date. Is it what you callafull
disclosure or IP rights?

I also note the signature of the Patent: it was an IETF participant at least
at end of 1999, and probably in mid-2000 as well, so theirs is real doubt
about his honesty (but this is difficult to judge now, given that the
disclosure of IP rights assignments were secured only in the last few
years.)

If I come so late on this issue, it's only because I rediscovered my old
message archived on ICANN server along with the patent claim, using a google
search on my own name.

Thanks for your reply. I hop that my message will not cause you more legal
harassment with this Patent, and this was really disturbing for me, to see
that you were abused, for something that I discussed before the patent was
disclosed publicly in late 2006.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:56:43 -0400

From: "Philippe Verdy" <[email-masked]>

Looking at the Patent Office's copy of the patent

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6347085.PN.&OS=PN/6347085&RS=PN/6347085

I see that the filing date is 14-August-1997.

If I remember correctly, US law uses a "first to invent" system, and
the inventor has 1 year after the first public disclosure of the
invention to submit the patent application.  So basically anyone who
can prove they invented the same thing before August 1996 can
invalidate this patent.  Anything after August 1997 is irrelevant.

The best proof of a prior invention is some sort of archived
publication.

At a first glance, RFC 1530 does not directly invalidate the patent
because the patent is rather narrow:

    Claim 1: In a process [...]  telephone numbers having area code,
    exchange, and subscriber segments, each segment comprising a sequence
    of numbers, the method comprising:

    A. generating a telephone number domain name identifying a telephone
    number by reversing the order in which the segments of the telephone
    number were received without modifying the sequence of numbers within
    each segment; 

That is, RFC 1530 turns +1 800 555 1234 into
4.3.2.1.5.5.5.0.0.8.1.tpc.in., the patent turns it into
1234.555.800.1.example.com., which is not precisely the same.  (Though
at least claim 1 doesn't even address country codes.)

At this point, it doesn't look like the patent applies to ENUM
resolution.

(Of course, I am not a lawyer, and I haven't even read all the claims
in the patent.)

Dale