FYI: Novell Announces New Patent Policy

    	I just got this in the eMail today, which looks very encouraging to me 
about Novell's future because it's supportive of the open source movement 
(now if only Novell would officially oppose Microsoft's application to 
Patent "Sender ID" on the basis that prior art already exists, and
it's an 
obvious solution to a very wide-spread problem):



Novell's NEW PATENT POLICY 


12 Oct 2004

Dear Valued Customer:

Today Novell expands its commitment to you by putting its extensive patent 
portfolio squarely behind its customers, and we thought you'd like to know 
about it.  Our motivations are simple: protect customer choice and preserve 
marketplace innovation.

Novell has just issued a statement announcing our preparedness, if 
necessary, to use our own patent portfolio - which covers technologies with 
significant value and widespread deployment in the IT sector today - to 
defend against patent attacks on open source products we deliver.  Both the 
press release and policy statement are available at 
http://www.novell.com/company/policies/patent/

This initiative is aimed at any vendor that tries to mislead customers 
using intellectual property rights as a reason to avoid pursuit of an open 
source offering.  To our knowledge, no vendor has actually filed a patent 
suit against an open source product.  Instead, some appear to be simply 
trying to sow doubts in the minds of customers to avoid competing on 
technical merits, security, quality of service and value.  Novell believes 
that open source software poses no greater risk of patent infringement than 
does closed source software.

I believe our Chairman, Jack Messman, said it best when he stated, “Our 
approach is to protect customer choice, not threaten it, and support the 
innovation inherent in the open source model.  With this policy, we're 
saying we'll use our patents to actively protect Novell's open source 
technologies against any third party asserting patent claims against our 
offerings.  We will use our patents for the original purpose patents were 
established – to encourage innovation – not to shut down options for 
customers.  We hope our leadership in this arena will lead other patent 
holders to take a similar stance.” 

I greatly appreciate the trust and confidence you have placed in Novell.

Sincerely,

Ronald W. Hovsepian
President, Novell North America



-- 
Randolf Richardson - rr@8x.ca
Inter-Corporate Computer & Network Services, Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.8x.ca/

This message originated from within a secure, reliable,
high-performance network ... a Novell NetWare network.

I can't speak for Novell but it strikes me that Sender ID is effectively 
dead due to the IETF decision and that of the Apache Foundation. Why 
then would it be necessary for Novell to make any statement regarding 
the patenting of a technology that has almost no chance of reaching 
critical mass. Who's going to configure a mail environment so that it 
will reject mail from most of the public SMTP servers in the world.

Randolf Richardson, DevNet SysOp 29 wrote:
>     	I just got this in the eMail today, which looks very encouraging to me

> about Novell's future because it's supportive of the open source movement 
> (now if only Novell would officially oppose Microsoft's application to 
> Patent "Sender ID" on the basis that prior art already exists,
and it's an 
> obvious solution to a very wide-spread problem):
> 
> 
> 
> Novell's NEW PATENT POLICY 
> 
> 
> 12 Oct 2004
> 
> Dear Valued Customer:
> 
> Today Novell expands its commitment to you by putting its extensive patent

> portfolio squarely behind its customers, and we thought you'd like to know

> about it.  Our motivations are simple: protect customer choice and preserve

> marketplace innovation.
> 
> Novell has just issued a statement announcing our preparedness, if 
> necessary, to use our own patent portfolio - which covers technologies with

> significant value and widespread deployment in the IT sector today - to 
> defend against patent attacks on open source products we deliver.  Both the

> press release and policy statement are available at 
> http://www.novell.com/company/policies/patent/
> 
> This initiative is aimed at any vendor that tries to mislead customers 
> using intellectual property rights as a reason to avoid pursuit of an open

> source offering.  To our knowledge, no vendor has actually filed a patent 
> suit against an open source product.  Instead, some appear to be simply 
> trying to sow doubts in the minds of customers to avoid competing on 
> technical merits, security, quality of service and value.  Novell believes

> that open source software poses no greater risk of patent infringement than

> does closed source software.
> 
> I believe our Chairman, Jack Messman, said it best when he stated, “Our 
> approach is to protect customer choice, not threaten it, and support the 
> innovation inherent in the open source model.  With this policy, we're 
> saying we'll use our patents to actively protect Novell's open source 
> technologies against any third party asserting patent claims against our 
> offerings.  We will use our patents for the original purpose patents were 
> established – to encourage innovation – not to shut down options for 
> customers.  We hope our leadership in this arena will lead other patent 
> holders to take a similar stance.” 
> 
> I greatly appreciate the trust and confidence you have placed in Novell.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Ronald W. Hovsepian
> President, Novell North America
> 
> 

""David A. Mair" <devsup@novell.com>" wrote in
novell.devsup.opensource:

[sNip]
> I can't speak for Novell but it strikes me that Sender ID is effectively
> dead due to the IETF decision and that of the Apache Foundation. Why 
> then would it be necessary for Novell to make any statement regarding 
> the patenting of a technology

    	Marketing advantage.  I believe this would be a smart move on Novell's 
part because fans of Open Source tend to dislike Patents and Microsoft, and 
since the Sender ID idea is being Patented by Microsoft therein lies the 
opportunty for Novell to object by way of a press release.

    	With Novell's strong history in the law (and especially Patents and 
other areas of Intellectual Property law), such an objection could really 
get Microsoft's attention and that would be a very good thing in my opinion 
because that could cause them to attempt yet again to attack Novell which 
translates to more free marketing.

> that has almost no chance of reaching critical mass.

    	A lot of people are watching Novell lately for a number of reasons, 
the two big ones being SuSE Linux, and press releases regarding SCO's 
mistaken interpretation of Intellectual Property (in this case Patents).

> Who's going to configure a mail environment so that it will reject mail
> from most of the public SMTP servers in the world.

    	Not many, however there are many who do use them as weights in their 
filters to determine if an eMail message should be rejected.

-- 
Randolf Richardson - rr@8x.ca
Inter-Corporate Computer & Network Services, Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.8x.ca/

This message originated from within a secure, reliable,
high-performance network ... a Novell NetWare network.