Jari Arkko <jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> writes:
Simon,
Do you have examples of licenses/IPR declarations that work better with
GPL and other forms of open source? Something for Mark and the rest
of us to use as a model, perhaps?
Jari, thank you for asking!
I am working on a document with guidelines for free standards in the
IETF, and I have written the following regarding patents. Much of the
material came from this thread. I have not yet discussed this
document in the free software community (which I intend to do before
publishing it), so be aware that things may change considerably.
/Simon
4. Patent Concerns
The IETF rules (see [RFC3978]) demands that authors notify the IETF
when they submit documents with patented technology (as far as the
authors are aware of). Third parties are also encouraged to submit
disclosures about patented technology in others' documents.
This process does not guarantee that all IETF documents will have no
IPR concerns. That was not the intention, and there are several
documents with a complicated IPR situation. One example is the
standards-track use of the patented RSA public-key algorithm.
Fortunately, the IETF process encourages and makes it easy to verify
whether there are known patents for a particular document.
If a documented is known to be patented, that may complicate the use
of the document in free software environments.
The first conclusion here is that readers will have to search the
online IETF IPR Disclosure page at http://www.ietf.org/ipr/ for the
document they are interested in.
4.1. What To Look For In A Patent Disclosure
An alternative title for this section may be 'How To Write A Free-
Software Friendly Patent Disclosure'.
Words to look for in a patent license is free-of-charge, world-wide,
royaltee-free, perpetual and non-exclusive right to the patent.
Some patent disclosures demands that you to write to the patent owner
and request a license. Such a clause leads to problems if a company
goes away or won't respond to requests. Depending on the text used,
it may even require that every user of the software is required to
apply for a license. That is not feasible for free software, which
is widely distributed to everyone. The recommendation here is that
the license should grant rights directly to third parties.
Some patent licenses restricts how you can use the technology. This
causes an incompatibility with many free software licenses, which
says that no additional restrictions may be placed on the
redistribution of the software. Further, free software is intended
to be generally useful. If one field-of-use is restricted, that goes
against the spirit of free software. The recommendation here is that
patent licenses should not impose any additional restrictions before
granting the rights.
4.2. Handling Submarine Patents
In some cases, patent disclosures are filed late in the process. It
may after a WG has accepted a document, after it has been last-
called, after it has been approved by the IESG, or even after it has
been published as an RFC. We call such late notification of earlier
patents as a submarine patent.
If the document has already been approved as an RFC, the published
document itself cannot be modified. However, the documents' status
on the standards track can be modified by publishing an approved
document containing the reasons for doing so. If the patent
disclosure is not considered to grant sufficient rights to third
parties, it is recommended to consider alternative technologies and
to write a document moving the RFC with patented technology off the
standards track.
In the other situations, it is recommended that interested parties
evaluate the patent disclosure and re-evaluate their earlier decision
to accept, last-call or approve the document.
4.3. Example License Text
Here is a simplistic patent license that would grant third parties
the necessary rights in order to use it in free software.
X grants a worldwide, non-exclusive, fully-paid,
perpetual, royaltee-free patent license to everyone for
any purpose.
[XXX: Most likely, this section will be heavily modified based on
feedback from the community.]
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf