Subject: patent and the TLS-Auth draft

From: Michael Gratton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:11:26 +1100

Hello,

I am writing in regard to the Internet Draft "Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Authorization Extensions <draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt>"
and patents applied for by RedPhone Security relating to this draft.

As an organisation, we use TLS for securing both our own information and
and that of clients for transmission across the Internet. Support for
authorization in TLS would be useful to us as an organisation to
centralise authorisation of incoming TLS connections.

However, I am concerned by the submarine patent(s) applied for by
RedPhone Security. My understanding is that they did not disclose these
patents until late in the process and, while they have granted licence
to implementors of the auth extension, they have not done so for users
of the extension.

Even more concerning, this has already been implemented by at least the
GnuTLS project and so may be unknowingly deployed by users and
organisations already, exposing them to litigation.

Please reconsider advancing draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt any
further until users of this specification can deploy it without fear of
patent claims.

Regards,
Michael Gratton,
Proprietor, Quuxo Software.

-- 
Michael Gratton <[email-masked]>     
Quuxo Software <http://web.quuxo.com/>