Subject: "implementor" wording in draft-ietf-ipr-template-05.txt

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 17:31:52 -0400

The template document has the following wording:

>    The Patent Holder states that, upon approval by the IESG for 
>    publication as an RFC of the relevant IETF specification, its 
>    position with respect to licensing any patent claims contained in the
>    patent(s) or patent application(s) disclosed above that would be 
>    necessary to implement the technology required by such IETF 
>    specification ("Patent Claims"), for the purpose of implementing the 
>    specification, is as follows (select one licensing declaration option
>    only): 
>     
>    a) ___   No License Required for Implementers 

Is it reasonably understood what the wording "necessary to implement the
technology" (and later "required for Implementors") means?

I.e., I assume it does not just refer to the "coder" who actually
implements the code, but also to any of the "covered" activities in
the following definition of ipr-technology-rights:

>    p. "Covers" or "Covered" mean that a valid claim of a patent or a
>       patent application in any jurisdiction or a protected claim, or
>       any other Intellectual Property Right, would necessarily be
>       infringed by the exercise of a right (e.g., making, using,
>       selling, importing, distribution, copying, etc) with respect to an
>       Implementing Technology.  For purposes of this definition, "valid
>       claim" means a claim of any unexpired patent or patent application
>       which shall not have been withdrawn, cancelled or disclaimed, nor
>       held invalid by a court of competent jurisdiction in an unappealed
>       or unappealable decision.

For clarity (assuming I have the details right), it seems like adding
some wording along the following lines to Section 3 would be useful:

   The term "implementor" as used in  Section VI refers to anyone
   who would be "Covered" by a technology as defined in ...

and then either include definition p. here, or refer to it in the
other document.

Thomas

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2003 14:22:39 -0400

Responding to Scott under this subject:

Scott  Bradner <[email-masked]> writes:

> as far as defining the term in the template - the most I would suggest
> to to have a place for the person filling out the teplate to
> say who the free license covers - I see no reason that we should
> restrict or define what the IPR discloser wants to say about 
> who can implement their technology for what type of license

The above would work for me too (but why restrict to only "free
license"?).

What I want to be clear about is, that if someone fills out a
template, there is no misunderstanding about who is covered or needs
to be aware. To me, "implementor", without any definition, seems
vague, especially given the much more explicit definition p. , in the
technology-rights document.

Thomas