John,
Good point (and I agree with your concerns about letting the IETF
Trust have perpetual rights to sublicense something that has expired, as
far as the IETF standards process is concerned). However, unless I
missed something, the IPR disclosures themselves would not be relevant
to any other body to which the IETF Trust granted copyrights to, but
only to the work done in the IETF. At least, this would most likely be
the case for any IPR disclosure that was drafted by a competent
attorney. Granting the IETF Trust the right to pass on copyrights to a
contribution is not the same as making an IPR declaration that passes on
to anyone, anywhere for any use of the patented technology in the
contribution.
Regards,
Chuck
-------------
Chuck Powers,
Motorola, Inc
phone: 512-427-7261
mobile: 512-576-0008
-----Original Message-----
From: John C Klensin [mailto:john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com]
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:34 AM
To: Powers Chuck-RXCP20; Stephan Wenger; IETF Discussion
Subject: RE: Removal of IETF patent disclosures?
--On Thursday, August 14, 2008 11:15 AM -0400 Powers
Chuck-RXCP20 <Chuck(_dot_)Powers(_at_)motorola(_dot_)com> wrote:
I think that Stephan raised some very good points as to why
allowing
some IPR disclosures to be removed actually makes sense.
Since quite
often IPR disclosures are made for a specific ID in a
specific working
group, if that WG ultimately does not choose that
technology (and the
ID expires), I am curious as to what the value would be of keeping
that IPR disclosure on file forever? If narrowly worded (as
many are),
it would not be applicable to any other ID submission or working
group, and would therefore have little use but to add to
the growing
list of disclosures in the IETF IPR database.
I would be curious to hear the reasoning for keeping these on file,
apart from 'historical record', since I am not convinced
the IETF IPR
database is the right place to hold onto IPR disclosures simply for
historical purposes that only apply to technology that will
never see
the light of day in an IETF standard, since the IETF
doesn't see any
value in keeping the IDs that they applied to in the first place.
Chuck,
As a long-term advocate of taking the provisions that I-Ds
expire after six months --at least to the extent of having
_all_ rights in them revert to the author(s)-- I think what
you are saying above is profoundly sensible.
However, the IPR WG, in its wisdom, has concluded, in some
phrasing that was changed fairly late in the game, that the
IETF Trust should get enough rights in I-Ds to authorize all
sorts of subsequent uses of them and their content, with no
time limit.
That phrasing passed through IETF Last Call and IESG signoff and
is the context in which the Trust is now writing rules. It
seems to me that, if the IETF (through the Trust) is going to
be in a position to grant rights to use material in I-Ds
forever, and if rights to use code in I-Ds (even for the
first time) don't expire after six months or some other
closed period, then, logically, we are obligated to keep the
IPR disclosures forever.
I suppose that, if I were a paranoid lawyer (and IANAL, even
if I'm paranoid about these sorts of things) and giving
advice to a participant in the IETF, I'd recommend that an
IPR disclosure be filed on every single I-D, indicating that
any licenses I might grant were good for only six months
after the posting of the last I-D in the relevant series
unless it were approved for RFC publication. What that would
do to the system we seem to be making for ourselves would be
interesting, at least.
john
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