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In 1994, National Semiconductor promised the IEEE that it would license two of its patents to anyone implementing the Fast Ethernet standard for a flat $1000. Later, it transferred those patents, and they eventually came to be owned by Negotiated Data Solutions (N-Data) - a troll. That's the same Ethernet standard that's implemented in millions of computers all over the world. You can guess what happened next.
N-Data then repudiated the National commitment, and demanded far more for the right to implement the standard, fulfilling a fear that people have long had in both open standards as well as open source settings - that the assignee of a patent would not be bound by a promise that the industry was already relying on. Now the FTC has announced that it has forced N-Data into a settlement where N-Data will honor the original National Semiconductor promise, even though the FTC acknowledges that technically N-Data didn't break any laws. The settlement represents a major victory against patent trolls, and also answers the question of whether licensing promises travel with patents - at least where the marketplace has already become "loc
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