Well you start by mistaking the IETF for a democratic body. It isn't. There are
no members and no elections.
I don't think that you are raising issues that the IETF participants are not
aware of. All things being equal practically every participant would prefer
RAND+Zero cost licensing terms on all IPR grants.
Almost every IETF WG attempts to secure these terms, the problem is that there
are cases where it is simpoly not possible to secure them. In particular there
was no way to develop PKI based standards on that basis before the expiry of
the Diffie-Hellman patent.
The more relevant concern is that the IETF policy allows for infinite shades of
grey. Licensing terms are left to individual WGs to negotiate, a situation that
reduces the strategic negotiating leverage of the IETF. A large company that
makes a compromise to WG X cannot expect this to be considered a precedent that
other companies will be required to respect in WG Y. They can however be
expected to provide terms at least as generous in WG Y themselves.
The solution is to adopt the OASIS approach of a small set of clearly defined
IPR regimes and to require WGs to specify their chosen IPR regime during the
chartering process.
This would allow the creation of standardized IPR licenses for the particular
regimes. There is no particular reason why the Microsoft IPR grant should be
worded any differently to the IBM or VeriSign grant if they are intended to
provide the same rights.
I would expect that formation of groups on terms other than RANDZ would be very
rare, possibly non-existent. If someone has an effective patent claim and
expects to charge royalties then let them write the specification themselves.
They have the means to enforce compliance. I don't see why others would want to
do that for them.
I think that this approach also misses the fact that the real problem with IPR
is not the actions of WG participants. The real problem is the behavior of
non-participating patent trolls.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Rosen [mailto:lrosen(_at_)rosenlaw(_dot_)com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 2:28 PM
To: license-discuss(_at_)opensource(_dot_)org;
legal-internal(_at_)apache(_dot_)org; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Cc: ipr-wg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: IETF IP Contribution Policy
FYI about the IETF IP Contribution Policy, please see the
following link:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4342
/Larry Rosen
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