On February 28, 1996, the IESG received a message from Matsushita/Panasonic: Sincerely, Sukeichi MIKI Director Multimedia Development Center Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.,Ltd. informing us: of the current status of our patent application listed below in advance of its issuance. We have recently received "Notice of Allowance" from the U.S. Patent Office concerning our patent application related to the Mobile IP and are awaiting issuance of the U.S. patent. It will be issued around this May. - U.S. Serial No. : 08/014,766 (8 Feb. 1993) This patent application is based on following Japanese patent applications with priority, now pending in Japan. - Japanese application No. 05-227161 (10 Feb. 1992) - Japanese application No. 06-095998 (16 Sep. 1992) - Japanese application No. 06-149689 (10 Nov. 1992) After its issuance, Matsushita/Panasonic is also willing to license the patent on a non-exclusive, non-discriminatory basis and on reasonable terms and conditions for use with the Mobile IP. ==================== On June 20, 1996, the followng was received: Further to our March 1, 1996 e-mail sent to IESG members, we have to now inform you, regarding the U. S. patent application Serial No. 08/014,766, that a U. S. Patent No. 5,517,618 was issued on May 14, 1996. We have carefully reviewed, with members specialized in intellectual property, the relevance of the U. S. Patent to the Mobile IP draft, or the "IP Mobility Support" draft. As a result, we concluded that 1) the U. S. Patent discloses our ideas from which the "IP Mobility Support" draft could be derived, but 2) claims of the U. S. Patent would not be broad enough to fully cover the "IP Mobility Support" draft. On the other hand, we have reviewed also our other related patent applications, and confirmed that the following pending patent applications would cover the "IP Mobility Support" draft. - a U. S. divisional patent application of the above U. S. Patent, which includes claims that would be broad enough to cover the "IP Mobility Support" draft - a European patent application of publication No. 0 556 012 A2, which is a corresponding European application of the above U. S. Patent - Japanese patent applications No. 05-227161, No. 06-095998, No. 06-149689, which are priority applications of the above U. S. Patent - a Japanese patent application of laid-open No. 05-83260 ============================================= On August 7, the following note was reveived Date: August 7, 1996 To: Mr. Steve Coya, Executive Director From: A. Teraguchi, Intellectual Property Center, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Re: A letter (Message) Dear Mr. Coya: We are writing to you, because Mr. Sukeichi Miki asked us for communicating with you in order to inform you of the specific terms and conditions under which Matsushita is willing to grant a license of a patent to implementors of IETF specifications. First, we would like to inform you of a scope of a claim of our pending patent applications, a U.S. divisional patent application of the U.S. patent No. 5,517,618, a European patent application of publication No. 0 556 012 A2, and Japanese patent application of laid-open No. 05-83260, as follows. " a migration communication control device constructed to control a communication between a mobile node and a partner node, the mobile node migrating across networks and obtaining an address assigned on each network while the partner node being a communication partner of the mobile node, comprising a first migration control unit and a second migration control unit, the second migration control unit being placed on the mobile node, wherein the first migration control unit comprises: packet transfer means for receiving a packet which was destined for an outdated address of the mobile node, the outdated address assigned when the mobile node migrated to a network to which the first migration control unit is attached, generating a conversion packet which holds an updated address instead of the outdated address, and transmitting the conversion packet; and the second migration control unit comprises: migration post means for transmitting to the first migration control unit a migration post message which indicates the updated address of the mobile node when the mobile node migrates to another network; and packet resumption means for receiving the conversion packet from the first migration control unit and resuming an original packet from the conversion packet" We believe the scope of the claim above-mentioned might cover a basic architecture of the "IP Mobility Support" draft. As described in Section 1.5 of the draft, Mobile IP introduced three new functional entities, a Mobile Node, a Home Agent and a Foreign Agent. We consider that the Mobile Node is corresponded to the second migration control unit, and both of the Home Agent and the Foreign Agent are corresponded to the first migration control unit in our patent applications, although these patent applications are still pending at present, not issued as patents. By the way, we really intend to contribute to development of the Internet community and to keep a good relationship with IAB/IESG/IETF. We believe that our case would be a good examples for patent license in the field of the Internet community. However, our patent applications are still pending in each country's patent office as mentioned above. It seems to us that we could not offer the specific terms and conditions under our patents, till they will be issued as patents and the patent coverage will be fixed. We hope that a list of our patent and patent applications related Mobile IP will be on Mobile IP RFC documents because such information would be usefull and valuable for Mobile IP implementors. After issuance as patent, we are willing to grant a license of the patent, on a non-exclusive, non-discriminatory and on reasonable terms and conditions, to possible licensee. It would be helpfull for us to know some cases of license's terms and conditions in the field of Internet community if any. We would thank you in advance for your advices and information. Sincerely. Atsushi Teraguchi Manager, Intellectual Property Center Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Internet:teragua@ipc.mei.co.jp TEL :81-6-908-5939 FAX :81-6-906-5939