Steven Bellovin wrote:
Because the strong consensus of the IPR WG a few years ago was to keep
the current policy. As Ted Hardie pointed out, that group's mailing
list is the correct place to raise this issue -- but frankly, I don't
think the consensus has changed since the issue was last considered.
Stephan Wenger wrote:
Actually, per RFC 3978 and friends, the IETF does not even require a
RAND commitment. There have recently been cases where RFCs have been
issued with known patents that are not offered under RAND terms. It's
up to the WG and IETF consensus to decide whether I-Ds including such
encumbered technology can become RFCs (and what class of RFCs).
Scott Brim responded:
I'm with Ted ... let's take this over to ipr-wg.
I respectfully disagree with Steven Bellovin and Scott Brim, and ask that we
NOT turn this issue back to the IPR-WG unless and until its charter is
revised to allow it to *completely revise* IETF's IPR policies with respect
to patents.
This issue was "strangled in committee" the last time the IPR-WG addressed
RAND and other IPR policies for industry standards, with the WG leaders
insisting (erroneously in my opinion) that there was consensus NOT to
address the problems that the current IETF patent polices pose for open
source *and* proprietary implementations of supposedly open standards.
However it has to be done, I ask that IETF not let that burial happen again.
Let's first charter the IPR-WG to completely reconsider the IETF patent
policy in light of new software industry expectations, and so that we get
rid of the inadequate RAND (and even non-RAND) IETF IPR policies that
currently exist.
/Larry Rosen
Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243
Skype: LawrenceRosen
Author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and
Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall 2004)
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven M. Bellovin [mailto:smb(_at_)cs(_dot_)columbia(_dot_)edu]
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 12:20 PM
To: Paul Vixie
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: why can't IETF emulate IEEE on this point?
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:47:46 +0000
Paul Vixie <paul(_at_)vix(_dot_)com> wrote:
in <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/21/802_11n_patent_threat/>,
we see:
Letters of Assurance are requested from all parties
holding patents which may be applicable to any IEEE
standard. Basically they state that the patent owner
won't sue anyone for implementing the standard. ...
i was thinking, what a great policy. why doesn't IETF have one like
it?
Because the strong consensus of the IPR WG a few years ago was to keep
the current policy. As Ted Hardie pointed out, that group's mailing
list is the correct place to raise this issue -- but frankly, I don't
think the consensus has changed since the issue was last considered.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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