Firm says Microsoft will lay claim to whole Internet

A NETWORKING research and development outfit claims that the Mighty Microsoft is planning to take over the internet by retroactively claiming IP (intellectual property) rights over many of the Internet's basic protocols.

Merit Network's Larry Blunk said that having a quick squint at Microsoft's Royalty Free Protocol License Agreement, the software colossus seemed to be suddenly claiming IP rights to many vital Internet protocols.

He dashed off a note to the IETF's Intellectual Property Rights Working Group to express his concerns in Microsoft's Royalty Free Protocol License Agreement.

Blunk said that Microsoft is claiming some form of IP rights over "a total of 130 protocols which Microsoft is offering for licence."

Many of the listed protocols are [IETF] RFC [request for comment] documents, including but not limited to the core TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6 protocol specifications," he said.

Some of the RFC protocols include the TCP/IP protocols and the DNS (Domain Name System), are key bits of the Internet's network infrastructure.

He notes that Vole does not specify how this list of protocols was derived and to what extent it has investigated their possible rights holdings over them.

Blunk said he was worried that people would be intimidated into signing the licence agreement simply due to Microsoft's vast financial and enormous brief budget. The full story can be found here. µ