Hi Ashishek
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On
Behalf Of Abhishek Verma
Sent: Friday, 22 January 2010 12:31 PM
To: Paul Hoffman
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: Motivation to submit an idea in IETF?
Hi Paul,
At 6:27 AM +0530 1/22/10, Abhishek Verma wrote:
I spoke to several people offline and i couldnt get any
good answers.
I suspect that you got many good answers, maybe all
different. The fact that many people have different
motivations for submitting > their work to the IETF instead
of {something else} is a feature, not a bug.
And what are those motivations? Wouldnt patenting be the most obvious
thing to do?
The typical response was that most ISPs prefer multiple
vendors, and a
patented solution will cause issues as the other vendor
will not have
that support. Is this the only reason?
No.
This may not be the only reason, but is this a valid reason at all?
(Please note that my response is informational only and does not constitute
comments on any IETF policy or existing IPR claim.)
I think that whetever the reason, documents submitted to the IETF
are less likely to become standards track RFCs if there is critical
IPR which must be licensed in order to construct the protocol.
The IPR BCPs for the IETF enforce disclosure of known IPRs when an idea
is submitted for consideration. This tries to make the issue above board.
When IPR becomes known, unless it is accompanied by permissive license
statements
the community often prefers unencumbered technologies. This allows the
standards
to be adopted by the widest number of users on the Internet, regardless of
whether they have money to pay license fees.
In terms of benefits which may be acquired by submitting IPR-free or
royalty-free IPR ideas to IETF, there may be value purely from creating a common
protocol to talk between vendors, an end-user may wish to drive standardized
solutions where no or vendor only solutions exist, or there may be a desire
to make the Internet better from a community interest point of view.
As far as I know, in terms of creating or adding value to a business aligned
with work on IETF, there may be additional non-IETF focussed systems which can
be built on-top of, or around an unencumbered idea. Such peripheral IPR could
then be used to build a business case with some protection. It may require
some sophistication to ensure that the external idea/IPR does not impinge upon
the
IETF submitted idea.
Please note that I am not an expert on this and you would need an Intellectual
Property Lawyer to look into the issue, if your business depended on building
IPR.
I hope this helps,
Sincerely,
Greg Daley
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