p2pnet.net News:- IBM says its Enterprise Privacy Authorization Language (EPAL) is, "a formal language to specify fine-grained enterprise privacy policies. It concentrates on the core privacy authorization while abstracting from all deployment details such as data model or user-authentication."

Canada’s Zero-Knowledge Systems, however, says EPAL is based on ZNS technology and is now suing IBM for $5.1 million (almost $7 million Canadian) for alleged copyright infringement behalf of ZNS’ Synomos Inc, once its Enterprise Privacy Unit.

ZNS, which includes Lawrence Lessig on its advisory board, develops products and services to allow customers to, "defend their computer, files and personal information against online security and privacy threats".

It owns Freedom Websecure which it says here is a "state-of-the-art Internet privacy software that allows for anonymous surfing and private Web browsing. Freedom WebSecure acts as a shield to prevent tracking of your surfing habits and personal information. It encrypts and reroutes your connection requests through our proxy servers with 128-bit encryption so that Web sites or hackers cannot track your personal information."

Other products include Freedom Anti-Virus; Freedom Firewall; Freedom Pop-Up Blocker; and, Freedom Parental Control.

ZKS claims EPAL is based on work Synomos did with IBM between June 2001 and February 2002, "to develop an XML privacy language standard, PRML (Privacy Rights Markup Language)," says an IDG News Service story here.

"The work on PRML was used as the foundation for EPAL, making Zero-Knowledge and IBM co-owners of the standard, Zero-Knowledge said in a statement.

"Zero-Knowledge claims IBM violated its copyright and breached an agreement reached before the joint work on the PRML standard when it submitted EPAL to the W3C without acknowledging Zero-Knowledge’s role in developing it, and when it licensed the technology without Zero-Knowledge’s consent, the company said."

IBM launched EPAL, "with a fanfare in July last year before submitting and licensing it to the World Wide Web Consortium," says out-law.com here, adding:

"At no stage, says ZKS, did IBM acknowledge ZKS’s contribution, or obtain ZKS’s licence, authority or consent."

Go here for details.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2004 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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