Title: Clarification from Cisco Systems on Tag Switching Patent Update Received: March 17, 2004 From: Robert Barr The IETF IPR statement with the title "Clarification from Cisco Systems on Tag Switching Patent" purports to cover "any standards arising from the MPLS IETF standards process". This blanket statement may be ineffective under the recently approved RFC 3668. Cisco hereby notifies the IETF that this IPR statement shall not be applicable to any standards approved by the IETF after March 31, 2004. Robert Barr Worldwide Patent Counsel Cisco Systems 408-525-9706 rbarr@cisco.com ------------------------------------------------- Original Message: Message received from Tom Downey of Cisco Sytems Reveived Tuesday, December 3, 1996 The tag switching documents on http://www.cisco.com are somewhat unclear about the licensing of tag switching-related intellectual property. To clarify things: Cisco plans to submit the Tag Distribution Protocol and other elements of tag switching to the IETF for standardization, and to that end has published several Internet Drafts describing tag switching and is co-chairing a BoF at the December IETF meeting. In the Internet Drafts, Cisco disclosed that Cisco has applied for one or more patents on technology related to tag switching (and we encourage other companies with patents or patent applications related to this IETF standards work to also make such a disclosure). If any patents issued to Cisco are required to practice any standards arising from the tag switching IETF standards process, Cisco intends to disclose those patents and license them under openly specified and non-discriminatory terms, for at most a nominal fee, and will fully comply with the licensing provisions of RFC 2026 (in particular, sections 10.3.2 and 10.3.3). This will apply irrespective of whether or not the licensee is a Cisco IOS partner. The company also plans to license the Cisco IOS implementation of tag switching to its Cisco IOS partners. Given where Cisco is in the patent process, details cannot be disclosed at this time, but Cisco intends to disclose such information as soon as it is appropriate. For further information, please contact: Tom Downey, tdowney@cisco.com, or Michael Dean, mdean@cisco.com ---------- X-Sender: tdowney@lightstream.cisco.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 09:36:08 -0500 To: tagswitch@cisco.com From: Tom Downey Subject: More on Tag Switching Patents Several people have asked questions regarding my previous email on Cisco's patents and licensing for tag switching. Specifically, people asked about the phrase "for at most a nominal fee" and what "nominal" meant. To be more specific, if any patents issued to Cisco are required to practice any standards arising from the tag switching IETF standards process, Cisco intends to disclose those patents and license them under openly specified and non-discriminatory terms, for _no_ fee. Our goal is to support and encourage the standardization efforts within the IETF and to achieve a multi-vendor concensus on a set of protocols for this new technology area. ================================================================ Message received from Tom Downey of Cisco Sytems Reveived November 5, 1997 Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 18:09:39 -0400 To: iesg@ietf.org Sender:iesg-request@ietf.org From: Tom Downey Subject: tag switching patents Cc: mpls@external.cisco.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Recently, I have been asked questions regarding my December 1996 email on Cisco's patents and licensing for tag switching. In December, I noted that if any patents issued to Cisco are required to practice any standards arising from the MPLS IETF standards process, Cisco intends to disclose those patents and license them under openly specified and non-discriminatory terms, for no fee. The recent questions have asked what the terms will be. If any patents issued to Cisco are required to practice any standards arising from the MPLS IETF standards process, Cisco intends to license those patents under the terms and conditions that were used by HP in RFC 1988. As noted in December, our goal is to support and encourage the standardization efforts within the IETF and to achieve a multi-vendor concensus on a set of protocols for this new technology area.