NetworkWorldFusion: Patent flap slows multilingual domain name plan

"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...."

"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...."

"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."

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