Re: SPF is harmful, on track for being patented by Microsoft, *and* supported by our Spammer-In-Residence.

From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard (J.deBoynePollard_at_Tesco.NET)
Date: 09/24/04 

Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 15:43:03 GMT

JdeBP> Steven Maesslein has just posited, in another thread, that
JdeBP> Microsoft's pending patents covering it will be the death
JdeBP> knell for SPF.

S> Microsoft is on record stating that their patent claims covers
S> Sender-ID only, not SPF. Sender-ID is _not_ SPF. Two different
S> things:

I'm well aware of the difference. What you aren't well aware of is that
Microsoft's claims that its patents cover Sender ID are contradicted by
the actual texts of the patents themselves. As I reported in my first
message, posted here several days ago, Microsoft's patent applications
have just become publically available; two people have looked at
Microsoft's patents and reported their findings; and both of those
people have discovered that Microsoft's patents cover SPF as well as
Sender ID.

(What you are _also_ not well aware of is the importance of spelling
"Sender ID" correctly. Microsoft has gazumped the IETF by applying last
year for patents covering all DNS-based SMTP Relay client checking
systems. And, at the same time, another company,
<URL:http://senderid.org./>, has attempted to gazump both Microsoft and
the IETF by trademarking "SenderID". People have pointed out that
Microsoft always spells it "Sender ID", although I suspect that this nice
distinction is irrelevant to trademark infringement.)

S> Microsoft is on record as claiming IPR to -core and -pra documents
S> only, which are not related to SPF.

Your "only" *merely* means that no claim over the other
"draft-ieft-marid" documents in that group was made. It doesn't mean
that SPF was actually excluded from the patent claims.

S> anyone who implements SPF right now has a fairly strong estoppel
S> defense against any legal action from Microsoft.

No, they haven't. Microsoft's IPR disclosure didn't say that it had no
claim over SPF. It was silent on the matter of SPF.

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