Subject: Re: IPR at IETF 54

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 12:05:38 -0400

>> ... we should prefer technology which will be available
>> royalty-free, but that's not current policy
>
>Whose policy?

RFC-2026, section 4.1.2 ("Draft Standard"):

 If patented or otherwise controlled technology is required for
 implementation, the separate implementations must also have resulted
 from separate exercise of the licensing process.

/=========================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer      |
[email-masked]   |Incentive Systems, Inc. |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own. |
|=========================================================|
|I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be assi... Mmm, doughnuts!|
\=========================================================/

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 12:45:40 -0400

>  from separate exercise of the licensing process.

The problem is that very few standards make it to Draft. As the old saw 
goes, "the Internet is running on proposed standards". (A more accurate 
description would be "on Internet drafts and proposed standards"). 
Statistical details were presented at the last plenary.

Thus, this mechanism offers almost no remedy or protection. It would 
also be interesting to know if this has ever been checked in reality, 
even for the few standards that have made it that far. Also, this does 
not help if the two licensing arrangements are between two big 
corporations that have blanket mutual licensing deals, as is common. 
This says very little about whether a smaller company, a competitor or 
an open-source implementation could get a license.