Subject: RE: royalty-free blanket statements and reasonable terms

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 09:00:44 -0700

--On 26. august 2003 13:05 -0700 "Lawrence E. Rosen" <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> Harald and Scott,
>
> Adding a definition of the term "RF" does not change the IETF policy,
> particularly since the IETF policy doesn't require an RF license from
> anyone.
>
> Using the W3C definition would at least have the advantage of informing
> people of important patent license terms if the IETF-standardized
> technology were to be combined in a single implementation with some
> W3C-standardized technology.  If a licensor said, "we're licensing our
> technology on RF terms," we'd be able to conclude that the license terms
> were compatible with W3C's *and* IETF's definitions of RF.

Larry,

I heartily encourage and support an effort to publish text that people can 
point to and say "this is what we mean when we say RF".

Like the definition of "open source license", I think it would have to be 
of the form "any license that is no more restrictive than what's described 
here is appropriate" - companies seem to be just unable to resist adding 
more language into licensing documents - but otherwise, I think the current 
proposal is "close enough to be OK".

It's JUST the inclusion of this in the current set of documents, at a time 
when allowing a month of discussion to make sure it's correct and has 
consensus just about directly causes a month of delay in publishing the 
documents, I'm objecting to.

You and Chuck just gave a very good demonstration of why rushing text into 
this document set is a thoroughly Bad Idea.

                Harald

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---

From: "Catherine McCarthy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 11:16:02 -0700

Harald and Scott,

I agree that, at this late date, it is not appropriate to include additional
definitions in the current set of documents. As W3C illustrates, vetting the
definition of "royalty-free" is an arduous and time-consuming process.

However, since IETF members have raised questions related to the meaning of
"royalty-free," we should reference the W3C Patent Policy licensing
requirements section as an example of a standards industry accepted
definition of "royalty free."

The best way to do this is to provide a hyperlink to the W3C Patent Policy,
Paragraph 5 in the IETF Patent Disclosures and Licensing Declarations
Document Section VI b). [See:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20030520.html#def-RF

It may be useful to note that a royalty-free license is a license only to
those patents or patent applications that would necessarily be infringed by
implementing the specification. No other license under such patents or
patent applications is provided for any purpose. Additionally, a
royalty-free license is not a blanket license to all of one's patents.

Catherine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>; "'Scott Bradner'" <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 9:00 AM
Subject: RE: royalty-free blanket statements and reasonable terms