FW: [ebxml-dev] Anyone else rather perturbed by IBM's recent announcement....

[Scott Nieman <snieman@venturipartners.com>]

Does anyone else believe that IBM's CPPA patent could be contested??  I am
not a patent attorney either, but I want to add my $.02 worth.

All one really needs to do is to read the first few paragraphs of ISO 14662
Open-edi, which was first crafted in the early 1990s, to read about the
formation of agreements on the fly in order to conduct electronic business
on the basis of Open-edi scenarios.

UN/CEFACT/TMWG (and its predecessor AC.1) produced a document (N010) the
Next Generation EDI Reference Model, which included the concept of
discovering the capabilities of trading partner using electronic means.  The
development of this document started in the 1995-1996 timeframe, evolving
from IDEF modeling techniques to UML.  This effort determined that Open-edi
scenarios could be modeled as use case scenarios.  The N010 document was the
stepping stone to N090 or UMM as we know it.

X12 also has the Trading Partner Profile (X12 838), first introduced at
version release 3020 in the early 90's as well.  It has several segments
that provided information about transaction capabilities (TXN) and
information about business applications (ENE) at a company.  It was intended
to configure new trading partners but few people really knew how to do this,
or wanted to, because by that time AI techniques had a bad rap.
Auto-configuration was never completely possible, since all the
implementation guideline were different.

X12's SITG also participated with TMWG to work on both N010 and N090.  IBM
was invited by SITG to speak at X12 to discuss their efforts on Long Running
Transactions, and speaker was our friend Marty Sachs.  We thought this was
an information sharing event at the time.  Most know that Marty's R&D
ultimately evolved into tpaML.

All the prior mentioned standards/documents have been in the public domain
long before tpaML.

Finally, merging of profiles is a common practice in AI for decision
support, personalization and other wonderful tricks.  So far the
"innovation" behind tpaML is lacking.

I do not know the contents of IBM patent nor does it seem anyone else does
at this time, other than IBM themselves.  I hope that this patent be
REJECTED or rescinded (or whatever the process) by the Patent Office based
on OBVIOUSNESS.  It is not an original concept.  

Scott Nieman
Practice Director - Integration
Venturi Technology Partners
952.352.5889


-----Original Message-----
From: Martin W Sachs [mailto:mwsachs@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 7:45 PM
To: andrzej@chaeron.com
Cc: ebxml-dev@lists.ebxml.org
Subject: Re: [ebxml-dev] Anyone else rather perturbed by IBM's recent
announcement....


You apparently are not familiar with standards patent policies and
practices.  Licensing patents for "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" terms
is quite common though not universal.  Below is a reply that I posted on
the ebtwg list:

First of all, you can view the IBM IPR disclosure on the CPPA page of the
OASIS web site. The OASIS IPR policy is also publicly shown on the OASIS
top level page.

IBM has a patent covering electronic agreements which dates from before the
ebXML CPA work started.  We disclosed it recently in accordance with OASIS
policy which is "reasonable and nondiscriminatory licensing" (RAND).  There
was an unfortunate snafu earlier somewhere inside IBM.  The disclosure was
to be made to ebXML (also RAND policy) in mid-2000 in conjunction with the
startup of the CPP-CPA team but someone dropped the ball. I am not
authorized to discuss the legal matters but anyone with a specific concern
about CPPA version 1, which predates the disclosure, should contact the IBM
attorney mentioned in the disclosure.


Regards,
Marty

****************************************************************************
*********

Martin W. Sachs
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
P. O. B. 704
Yorktown Hts, NY 10598
914-784-7287;  IBM tie line 863-7287
Notes address:  Martin W Sachs/Watson/IBM
Internet address:  mwsachs @ us.ibm.com
****************************************************************************
*********


 

                      Andrzej Jan

                      Taramina                 To:
ebxml-dev@lists.ebxml.org                                        
                      <andrzej@chaeron.        cc:

                      com>                     Subject:  [ebxml-dev] Anyone
else rather perturbed by IBM's recent         
                                                announcement....

                      04/17/2002 06:41

                      PM

                      Please respond to

                      andrzej

 

 




..that they have patents and IP relating to CPP/CPA's and do not intend to
license
them for free?

Article on the subject at:


http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2861528,00.html
...Andrzej

Chaeron Corporation
http://www.chaeron.com



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