Patent flap slows multilingual domain name plan

[Ricardo Ueda Karpischek <ueda@ime.usp.br>]

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0326patent.html


    Patent flap slows multilingual
    domain name plan

    By CAROLYN DUFFY MARSAN
    Network World, 03/26/01

    MINNEAPOLIS - Intellectual property claims have
    blindsided the Internet Engineering Task Force and could
    derail the group's efforts to develop a common scheme
    for supporting foreign-language domain names across
    the Internet.


    Forum
    Your thoughts on the patent/domain-name issue. 


    Creating communications protocols for internationalized
    domain names is one of the most significant efforts under
    way within the IETF, the Internet's premier
    standards-setting body. The IETF is under pressure
    from Internet users outside the U.S., who want domain
    names in their native languages instead of the
    English-language alternatives available today.

    "What people want is to buy domain names with words
    and phrases from the real world," says John Klensin,
    head of the IETF's Internet Architecture Board. "This is
    a very tough issue. . . . Internationalizing the domain name
    system is the most difficult challenge we have faced
    since we deployed the Internet Protocol." 

    Indeed, the task is so tricky that the Internet Corporation
    for Assigned Names and Numbers and the world's
    country code operators agreed to wait until the IETF's
    development work is complete before supporting
    foreign-language domain names.

    However, the Internet user community may have to wait
    longer than it expected. The IETF's Internationalized
    Domain Name (IDN) working group recently discovered
    that an Ann Arbor, Mich., start-up named Walid received
    a patent on Jan. 30 that appears to cover many aspects of
    the technical solution developed by the working group. 

    This solution involves converting foreign language
    characters into Unicode, a computer industry standard,
    and then encoding them in U.S. ASCII for transmission
    over the Internet. It creates a presentation layer to
    display domain names to end users in their native
    languages. The advantage of this approach is that it
    requires no changes to the DNS protocol or existing DNS
    servers.

    Walid filed paperwork with the IETF claiming that it will
    seek licensing fees "based on reciprocity" if this
    approach is adopted in the group's final standard. 

    IETF officials last week asked Walid to reconsider and
    instead license the patent for free to all interested parties.
    If not, the IETF will likely scrap this approach and start
    over, which could make Walid's patent worthless. 

    IDN working group chair Marc Blanchet says he expects
    to hear from Walid within a month. "There are some
    signs that Walid may change its [intellectual property]
    stance," Blanchet says. "But there is no chance that the
    IETF will move ahead and test this patent claim."

    Walid competitors likely to test the claim include
    I-DNS.net and VeriSign, which is running a multilingual
    test bed in partnership with Walid. 

    Back-up plans

    If Walid doesn't agree to free and open licensing, the IDN
    working group is prepared to move forward with one of
    two technical alternatives: 

          Running the Uniform Transformation Format 8
          (UTF-8) - a Unicode representation - straight
          over the Internet, which would be confusing for
          end users and require revamping many protocols,
          including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and
          SNMP. 
          Creating a directory service on top of DNS to
          handle name translation and provide context for
          complex languages. The drawback of this solution,
          which Klensin proposed, is that it will take much
          longer to develop, debug and deploy than
          alternatives. 

    "I firmly agree with the way the IETF deals with
    [intellectual property] claims," says Paul Hoffman,
    co-author of the internationalization approach now
    patented by Walid. 

    But if Walid doesn't back off on its licensing claims, "it
    will be a very bad problem for everyone. We can either
    not do internationalized domain names, which will hurt
    end users because bad, proprietary solutions will exist, or
    we can go with UTF on the wire, which will also hurt end
    users."