--On Wednesday, January 25, 2012 17:06 -0600 Pete Resnick
<presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> wrote:
...
Before posting this Last Call (and the similar one for
draft-ietf-sieve-convert), the documents *were* returned to
the SIEVE WG to review the situation. With minimal complaint
from the WG and no indication that the WG wished to change
their decision on the documents, the chairs asked that I
simply put it to the entire community as a Last Call. So I
believe anything other than "go ahead with publication as is"
will be done only if that is the consensus of the IETF
community as a whole. The SIEVE chairs and I will be
monitoring the discussion.
Pete,
(responding to this message, but I've read the subsequent ones)
It seems to me that a key question here is whether the original
author's decision to not disclose was made in violation of
company policy or whether the sequence of posting the I-D,
getting the document through the WG and Last Call, and then
posting the disclosure is a matter of company policy. If such
behavior became a pattern, the IETF's IPR policy would be
essentially dead.
I believe that "go ahead with publication as is" would be
equivalent to encouraging such a pattern to develop and is
consequently not acceptable.
Consequently, I believe that at least the following should be
required:
(1) Revision of the IPR statement so it identifies the
responsible individual by name, department, and title. I do not
believe that the rather anonymous "Director of Licensing" is
compliant with the intent of the IPR disclosure rules. I will
leave it to the lawyers to advise on whether a document issued
without the name (not just title) of a responsible individual
would even be held to be valid in the various jurisdictions in
which the patent might be recognized.
(2) A request to the company involved for someone who can
formally speak for that company to publicly clarify that this
sequence of behavior occurred in violation of company policy.
If there are internal rewards to individuals for filing and/or
being awarded patents, I assume that a decision that the actions
violate company policy would cause such awards to be withheld in
this case, even though the IETF would have no way to verify
whether or not that occurred.
(3) A request to the company involved to remove the reciprocity
clause from the license stated in the disclosure statement. As
a show of good faith, they should agree to derive no benefit
from the patent other than what praise accrues from having it
awarded.
(4) Removal of the offending individual from the list of authors
to the acknowledgments with text similar to that suggested by
Adrian. Unless the company involved is willing to provide the
clarification suggested in (2) above, and possibly the license
modification suggested in (3) above, all names of authors
associated with that company should be removed to the
acknowledgements and the company affiliation explicitly
identified there. In either case, this should be viewed as a
response to a policy violation and not entangled with any more
general discussion of listed authors on I-Ds or RFCs.
(5) Unless the clarification suggested in (2) can be provided,
each IETF participant who is associated with the relevant
company and who is in an IETF-related leadership or
decision-making position (WG Chairs; Editors; IESG, IAB, IAOC,
Nomcom, members; etc.) should be asked to make a conscientious
personal review as to whether this type of action sufficiently
compromises his or her position that resignation or some other
action would be appropriate and, as appropriate, to review IETF
policies with whatever management chains are relevant. I am
_not_ suggesting that anyone be asked to resign, only that they
engage in careful consideration of the issues and their
implications.
Just my opinion.
regards,
john
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf