The single sign-on authentication technology under development by
the Liberty Alliance Project could be bound by intellectual
property restraints, despite a pledge from project founders who
have said the technology will be open and royalty free.
AOL Time Warner (AOLTW), one of the members of the 120-company
consortium, has claimed that technology it contributed to the
release of version 1.0 of the Liberty Alliance specification is
patented and may be subject to special licensing
requirements.
From the beginning, founding members of the project have vowed to
deliver a completely open and royalty-free technology that would
allow compatibility between single sign-on authentication systems
from a variety of vendors and Web site operators. Sun Microsystems,
which spearheaded the consortium, has been the most vocal advocate
of this, arguing that a royalty-free specification is vital in
order to provide an alternative to Microsoft's Passport
authentication technology.
"Certainly Sun's position is that any of the critical
infrastructure for the Web should be available on a royalty-free
basis," said Bill Smith, director of Liberty Alliance technology at
Sun. "It's why the Internet has got off the ground. If we start
seeing tollbooths and barriers put up we're going to see an
impediment to growth."
A copyright notice attached to the first version of the Liberty
Alliance specification, which was released in July, states that
"implementation of this specification may involve the use of one or
more patents claimed by AOL Time Warner," and that "implementation
of certain elements of this specification may also require licences
under third party intellectual property rights".
AOLTW spokesman Andrew Weinstein said that while the company has
claimed rights to certain technology in the specification, users
would have free access to the specification in the first release.
AOLTW has yet to decide how it will licence its technology in
future versions of the specification.
"I think they're still working on some of the royalty issues,"
Weinstein said. "Obviously with any specification like this there
are going to be some intellectual property issues. We're not the
only one that is affected by this."
Sun's Smith said that it will give free access to the intellectual
property Sun contributed to the project with only one condition:
Any companies that charge royalty fees for their contributions will
have to pay Sun for its intellectual property. That means, if AOLTW
is the only company to charge royalties it will also be the only
company that has to pay royalties to Sun.
The patents that AOLTW has staked claims to were acquired from
Netscape Communications and are common Internet technologies, such
as those used to enable e-commerce, such as cookies, and the
security technology SSL (secure sockets layer), according to patent
descriptions on file with the US. Patent and Trademark Office.
Because these patents are so widely used on the Internet, few
expect AOLTW to charge royalty fees to companies that implement the
Liberty specification, said Michael Barrett, president of the
Liberty Alliance board, and vice-president for Internet strategy at
American Express.
"If they choose to licence [their patents] they could hold half the
Internet for ransom," he said.
A number of companies in addition to Sun and AOLTW have contributed
technology to the project. However, the New York-based media and
Internet company is the only member that has chosen to contribute
technology under a so-called RAND (reasonable and
nondiscriminatory) licence, according to Liberty Alliance
officials. Used by a number of international standards bodies, RAND
licences require that any intellectual property owner that charges
royalties for technology included in a standard must charge a fee
that is reasonable, published and not subject to individual
negotiation.
Allowing member companies to contribute technology under a RAND
licence is common in the standards-drafting community and doesn't
clash with the group's philosophies, Barrett said.
"The general preference is that, to the extent that we can, the
specification should be royalty free. However, there were a certain
number of technology companies that simply find universal
royalty-free unacceptable and pushed for the possibility of having
RAND.
"This is actually an extremely common issue that standards
organisations have to wrestle with," Barrett said. "We're sticking
as close as we can to our principles, but we have to be pragmatic."