John, Brian
Most standards organizations require that participants who have, or whose
company has, IPR relevant to a potential standard, disclose this at an early
stage and at least prior to publication.
The participants in the IETF are individuals however RFC3979 addresses this
by stating that any individual participating in an IETF discussion "must"
make a disclosure if they are aware of IPR from themselves, their employer
or sponsor, that could be asserted against an implementation of a
contribution. The question this raises is - what does participation in a
discussion mean? This has been interpreted by courts to mean members of a
standards body, people that are subscribed to the email list of the
standards body and more broadly, people that would have known that a
standard was being developed.
Asking the participants in an IETF WG (and not just authors) to disclose any
IPR they are aware of that may impact a draft is simply implementing the
policy outlined in RFC3979. Personally I'd like to see a broader
requirement that IETF participants are asked to request that their company
or sponsor perform a quick search of their own patents to see if there is
any relevant IPR.
Unfortunately, while standards organizations define their patent policies,
the interpretation of these is often done in the legal system in the context
of a patent infringement case. While we don't like this - it is the world
we live in, and we should make sure that the IETF patent policy is
implemented in a way that reduces the likelihood of litigation against
someone that implements a draft/ RFC/ standard.
Regards
Alan Clark
On 9/18/13 4:23 PM, "John C Klensin" <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> wrote:
--On Thursday, September 19, 2013 07:57 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
<brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
On 17/09/2013 05:34, Alan Clark wrote:
...
It should be noted that the duty to disclose IPR is NOT ONLY
for the authors of a draft, and the IETF "reminder" system
seems to be focused solely on authors. The duty to disclose
IPR lies with any individual or company that participates in
the IETF not just authors.
Companies don't participate in the IETF; the duty of
disclosure is specifically placed on individual contributors
and applies to patents "reasonably and personally known" to
them.
IANAL but I did read the BCP.
Brian,
That isn't how I interpreted Alan's point. My version would be
that, if the shepherd template writeup says "make sure that the
authors are up-to-date" (or anything equivalent) it should also
say "ask/remind the WG participants too". IMO, that is a
perfectly reasonable and orderly suggestion (and no lawyer is
required to figure it out). One inference from Glen's point
that authors have already certified that they have provided
anything they need to provide by the time an I-D is posted with
the "full compliance" language is that it may actually be more
important to remind general participants in the WG than to ask
the authors.
john