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Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary

2008-12-12 14:38:06

On Dec 12, 2008, at 1:28 PM, Simon Josefsson wrote:

John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> writes:

Let's do keep in mind that the license permission for reuse in
IETF work has existed explicitly since RFC 2026 (1996) and
implicitly for a long time before that.   So, again for IETF
work, the notion of having to either contact a lot of people to
get permission or to completely rewrite is just not an issue, at
least for documents that have been originated or revised since
1996.

That conflicts sharply with how I read Russ' answer "the contributor
must obtain the additional rights from the original contributor".

I wish you were right. I was surprised by the conclusion in the initial
e-mail in this thread.  I had believed all along that the IETF had
sufficient rights to allow re-use of IETF documents within the IETF
standard.  I hope further explanation of the legal situation will give
us more information.


My understanding (and IANAL and Jorge is welcome to correct me) is that the IETF does indeed have "sufficient rights to allow re-use of IETF documents within the IETF", and that this is purely concerned with the power of granting modification rights to other parties.

This is not a very common occurrence as far as I can tell, and so in some sense
this is a corner case.

Regards
Marshall

There is a gray area for "code" materials last published before
1996, but I suggest that they are few enough for the Trust to
deal with on a special-case basis.  That is, I assume, one of
the reasons the IPR WG gave the Trust some flexibility.

I don't see how this has anything to do with code vs text separation.
The issue applies equally to code and text written before pre-RFC5378.
There is nothing in Russ' note to suggest that this is related to only
code, nor was this an aspect brought up by Sam.  I listened to the
recorded plenary a few days ago to remember the details.

Given that, Marshall, your proposal essentially requires the
Trust (and potentially Counsel) to do considerable work on
behalf of hypothetical third parties who might want to make
non-IETF use of some IETF materials.

No.  As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some
minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis.  Even though I was
editor of RFC 4398.  The reason is that some material in that document
was written by others.  At least, I cannot do this, without getting
permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish
this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this
example with what Russ wrote.

/Simon

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