Carl Malamud writes:
RFCs are for all practical purposes in the public domain and it would
be a very gutsy RFC author that went to court and tried to show that
they had systematically defended their copyright over the last X years
and were thus entitled to assert copyright this year.
While many RFCs may have fallen into the public domain, I should point
out that copyright holders need not actively defend their copyrights
in order to keep them. That is often true for things like trademarks
and trade secrets, but not for copyrights, which retain their full
validity for their entire term, whether they are defended or not.
Note that every message sent by anyone to this mailing list (or any
mailing list, for that matter) is also protected by copyright. This
remains true whether or not individual authors choose to defend their
copyrights.
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf