Subject: RE: FW: can you chime in on this one?

From: "Contreras, Jorge" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:51:56 -0400

I think Thomas's comments present two viable options:

1.  Say that the IPR owner must also disclose the
"reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" that it
would impose; or

2.  Require that even companies offering RF
licenses must disclose specific IPR, just like
everyone else.

Assuming that I've correctly summarized Thomas's 
point, perhaps we could have some discussion of the
relative merits of these two approaches.

Jorge

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Bradner [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 4:46 PM
To: Contreras, Jorge; [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: FW: can you chime in on this one?

can you suggest words to clarify what Jorge says is meant here
(i.e. that the terms are "royalty-free") - my 1st cut at this did not
include the other words but they were suggetsed on the list

> So one question is how strongly the community feels that a royalty
> free blanket statement should allow dispensing with per-technology
> disclosures, and how important it is for vendors with royaly-free
> policies to be able to skip making specific disclosures.

I think it's pointless, silly and counterproductive to ask someone 
who has made a clear stament that they will give away any and all IPR 
to then spend the time and effort to detail where the IPR they will 
give away impacts IETF work.  It seems to me that this would be a 
good way to discourage people from giving away the IPR.

If they agree to give it away, there is no related IPR issue for the working
group  to deal with (at least from this IPR owner) so why is there
a need to ask them to do the work?

Scott

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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:24:48 +0300 (EEST)

> relative merits of these two approaches.

Note that the current ipr-template says:

                                  No actual license is
   implied by submission of this template.

.. this is something I've criticized.  If terms are RF and otherwise 
"reasonable", it is IMHO not reasonable to _require_ you to conduct the 
licensing discussion and agreeing to a specific license.  

IMHO, this is a BIG bug.

In the same vein, if someone has RF blanket license, this would have to 
change -- because you can't negotiate specific RF licenses if you don't 
know you should be doing it.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

---

From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 07:40:04 -0400 (EDT)

> it is IMHO not reasonable to _require_ you to conduct the

I think this is a false worry - why would someone who was giving away
their technology want to spend money (to negotiate individual licenses) in
order to give it away?

Scott

---

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 20:33:06 +0300 (EEST)

> their technology want to spend money (to negotiate individual licenses) in

Don't ask me, but I can certainly figure out reasons to do so -- 
continuing off-list.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 14:59:35 +0200

> their technology want to spend money (to negotiate individual licenses) in

I don't see why it's a worry, but it is certainly the case that some
IPR holders may be perfectly willing to grant RF licenses to any
implementor that writes and asks for them, to implement a specific
standard, but are not willing to make an open RF grant that does not 
require explicit licenses.

The question of whether it's reasonable to do this is a decision for
the IPR owner (that's why we call them the "owner" :-).

In fact this is running code. "RF" is not a single valued function. This
isn't something the IETF can determine.

   Brian

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From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 09:08:53 -0400 (EDT)

> the IPR owner (that's why we call them the "owner" :-).

reasonable or not its up to them - all we can do is to ask for clarity

so maybe add someting to teh current text to say that blanket IPR
statements are OK only if no per-implementer/user interaction is needed

Scott

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 11:23:31 -0500

This seems very appropriate to me, balancing
"making it easy to contribute RF IPR" and
"helping to identify IPR restrictions, whether
they involve royalties or something else".

Spencer

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:21:25 -0400

> licenses must disclose specific IPR, just like

Yes, this captures my points.

Having thought some more about this, I'd like for us to be able to
have 1) be done, so that royalty-free does in practice mean that WGs
don't need to worry about such IPR. That would seem to be the goal,
after all.

But, that raises a potential process issue that I don't know how to
deal with right off. That is, how to go about resolving disputes if
there is disagreement as to whether the "reasonable and
non-discriminatory" are in fact viewed by the community as being such.

This issue already comes up with IPR in standards track documents. On
this topic, RFC 2026 dealt with as follows:

> 10.3.3  Determination of Reasonable and Non-discriminatory Terms
> 
>    The IESG will not make any explicit determination that the assurance
>    of reasonable and non-discriminatory terms for the use of a
>    technology has been fulfilled in practice.  It will instead use the
>    normal requirements for the advancement of Internet Standards to
>    verify that the terms for use are reasonable.  If the two unrelated
>    implementations of the specification that are required to advance
>    from Proposed Standard to Draft Standard have been produced by
>    different organizations or individuals or if the "significant
>    implementation and successful operational experience" required to
>    advance from Draft Standard to Standard has been achieved the
>    assumption is that the terms must be reasonable and to some degree,
>    non-discriminatory.  This assumption may be challenged during the
>    Last-Call period.

Just having the IPR holder state their terms leaves open the question
of who evaluates reasonableness. I sure hope that the IESG isn't
expected to do this on its own. But if a process is needed, what
process would that be, and how could we keep it light weight?

Thomas