On 6/21/12 9:50 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> From: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter(_at_)stpeter(_dot_)im>
> With all due respect, that sentence could be improved.
Agree with others; splitting it up into two simpler sentences is an
improvement.
A tweak, though (you lost something in the second sentence):
Anything that you write, say, or discuss in the IETF, formally or
informally,
either at an IETF meeting, or in another IETF venue, such as a mailing
list, is an IETF contribution. If any contribution of yours is covered by
a patent or patent application made by you or your employer, you or they
must disclose that.
The original allowed the employer to make the disclosure (since, after all,
the employee may not know of all patent filings), and also had a positive
requirement to make such a disclosure; this revised one brings all that back.
At the risk of starting a long thread about "we all contribute as
individuals", I'll note that traditionally the IPR rules have applied to
real people, not corporations. It's not the employee's responsibility to
know of all patent filings, and our IPR rules don't make that
assumption; we say only that if you have such knowledge and you make a
contribution that is based on such knowledge, you need to disclose the
IPR. If you don't want to disclose, you don't need to make a
contribution. I suppose it is fine to say "you or they need to disclose
it", but leaving it up to the faceless "they" might give individuals the
idea that this is all about corporations and not about each of us as
individual participants at the IETF. And somehow we also lost the point
about "you know" or "you believe" along the way. Thus I'd be more
happier with something like this:
Anything that you write, say, or discuss in the IETF, formally or
informally, either at an IETF meeting or in another IETF venue
such as a mailing list, is an IETF contribution. If you believe that
any contribution of yours is covered by a patent or patent
application made by you or your employer, you must disclose
that fact or arrange for your employer to disclose it on your behalf.
Peter
--
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/