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May 20, 2004
ENUM and Intellectual Property Rights / Reliving the Past
Internet Management Systems recently submitted a contribution to the current meeting of ITU-T Study Group 2 that claims that both they and HP have intellectual property and patents dealing with the mapping of telephone numbers to internet domain names.
Whether or not this IPR claim holds, it will signals the start of a process which may yield unpredictable results and may effect some business plans.
A quick look at prior-art shows that ENUM is using ideas from RFC 1486 published in July 1993 (which means Internet Drafts and testing were going on long before that date) which imply any patent claims talking about mapping of E.164 to domain names have to be filed before that date.
The VoIP industry first experienced something similar back in 1996 in the days of the "Codec Wars."
Posted by jeff on May 20, 2004 07:51 AM | Permalink
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