Transcript courtesy of Renee Cohen
(www.ecaptions.com).
Posted by permission, on the condition that the source
is properly credited.
IETF, Intellectual Property meeting,
July 19, 2002, at 9 a.m.
NEW SPEAKER: We're can going to
get started. I'm Steve somebody and Rob,
and we are your flight crew for this
running venture. If you're not fascinated
by IPR, you may go back to sleep, if you
don't have anything else scheduled this
morning. There's many fine sights in this
lovely country. If you are interested in
IPR, you're in the right place. The
traditional first thing, the blue sheets
are going around and then agenda bashing.
Does anybody want to make any changes to a
agenda?
NEW SPEAKER: We also need a
scribe, does anyone want to take notes.
NEW SPEAKER: We need one lawyer
and one engineer. At least two people
taking notes.
NEW SPEAKER: We'll put your
slides in, I replied, and we'll put them in
at the beginning of that 45 minute section,
with the presentations.
NEW SPEAKER: So depending on how
the 2026 discussions go, can we talk about
bullet three in the chart, which was rules
of thumb for working group chairs.
NEW SPEAKER: You can try, yes.
We'll focus on that in the last part.
NEW SPEAKER: Right.
NEW SPEAKER: Are you still
looking for, something I didn't hear.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Are you a
lawyer or an engineer?
( Still looking for somebody to
take notes I think. )
NEW SPEAKER: Any other changes to
the charter? The other ones are rolling
off the bottom, but we'll worry about those
later.
Okay. First item to the agenda
then is the proposed charter. You have all
seen it in the e-mail. Before we actually
start, the goal of the work is to clarify
2026, that's the initial goal.
It isn't clear enough what the
rules actually are. I've been an A D only
three and a half months, I've already been
asked at least three times exactly what the
policy means. Who is entitled to make what
decisions in the face of what IPR? We also
had other issues come up, such as
trademark. We've got the note well
statement that has been in the registration
packets on mailing lists introductions and
so on for a while now.
We, even if we do nothing else in
this working group, we absolutely have to
spin the documents just to make all that
stuff clear. We don't settle for protocol
specs that don't tell you how to implement.
We have a process spec that doesn't tell
working group chairs how to do that. So we
have to clarify that.
But, there is un happy necessary
happyness, with 24 community. It would not
be fair to have an IPR working group that
wasn't at least open to the possibility of
changing that policy.
That's the sort of thing that will
take a much stronger and broader consensus,
because very significant change in our
rules, so charter requires, the proposed
charter will require a re chartering by the
I S G, to do that if there was strong
consensus in this room with a changed IPR
patent policy. We're not ruling it out.
We're just saying we have another task that
has to be done, even if we don't do the
larger more controversial one. But it is
open. It is open to discussion, as one of
the things that is on the agenda for today.
So we will ask about the mailing
list, the mailing list is up on the screen.
The usual request address for subscriptions
and archives are out there as well.
NEW SPEAKER: The current two
drafts that are under discussion, these two
will come up in a if you minutes. But
first let's discuss the charter. Does
anybody have any comments on the proposed
charter?
Are people happy with the notion
that we'll focus first on clarifying 2026,
and look for a broader consensus on
changing the patent policy?
Without objection, it's so
ordered. So we're ahead of schedule, and -
-
NEW SPEAKER: Don't worry.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott, do you want
to start?
NEW SPEAKER: Hello, gang. Okay.
Good morning.
You're not being tourists. So,
Steve already mentioned these are the two
drafts, the name of the drafts was to split
the RFC 2026 section ten into two parts.
One is copyright and trademark related and
the other is patent related.
This is design team output,
meaning there's nothing sacred about it.
If somebody wants to put in a competing
document, clarifying that, in some section
of 2026, they should do so. They could
also make comments on this one. Which is
about what we're going to do right about
now.
It is primarily to clarify, to
fold in the note well stuff, that we've
been using for the last few years. And to
clarify some of the things relative to
current legal usage. There's a little bit
of that.
Steve, can you, okay, the way
we're going to work this is, I'm going to
give you you some overall stuff, but Steve
will put up the individual, Internet draft
as I go through each session section. And
I'll say where it came from out of 2026 and
what changes, if any, need to be, and then
we can talk about them as we go along.
NEW SPEAKER: Which one do you
want first?
NEW SPEAKER: Drafts.
NEW SPEAKER: So, basically, the
first document is the submission rights
document. It contains the basic rule set
of submitting to the IETF. Such as no
secret material, and you agree that you
actually have the right to do this and
little things like that.
It includes the rights to make use
of IETF's rights to make use of contributed
materials, by using it in standards
process, publishing it. Copyrights
documents in the IETF documents. The
rights to make derivative works and the
limits on those rights.
And the new thing added is rights
of trademarks. We did not have that in the
2026, because at the time we did 2026, we
sort of thought that trademarks was just
another right and it was part of the thing.
But since then, we've had issues with
trademark, so we are adding specific text
on that.
So, there's a lot of wording
changes and a bunch of reordering. So, I
will call those out as we go along. Do you
want to put up the next one?
I will make my slides of, I'll
send my slides to Steve, which have the
section by section heading of saying where
things came from so you don't have to
memorize that as we go along.
The section 2 point one. The
abstract and the introduction are just
that, abstracts and introduction a as to
what's going on.
NEW SPEAKER: Can you make that a
bigger font or something?
NEW SPEAKER: Somebody didn't
bring their bifocals and wants a bigger
font.
NEW SPEAKER: I'm worried about
the people in the back. I can actually
read it.
NEW SPEAKER: The people in if
back, can you read it. If you you can't,
there's seats up front.
NEW SPEAKER: Good answer.
( A lot of people are joking about
that. )
NEW SPEAKER: This is huge. All
right.
( Laughter. )
NEW SPEAKER: Let's try large.
How many geeks does it take to
change the font?
All right. I think we're going to
say, the attempt has been made, to increase
the font size and this is what we've got.
NEW SPEAKER: How many people have
laptops here, it's in the address
directory, folks.
NEW SPEAKER: Wireless still works
for another few hours.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. So section
two point one is from 2026 section ten
point one and it's really just the overall
statement. Two point two is from section
2026, section ten point two, with no
significant changes. Now, I say no
significant changes, in my scanning it in
the last couple of days to make up these
slides, when Steve told me I was actually
supposed to stand up and do something,
rather than shrink into the woodwork, I
didn't see any substantive changes. But I
do not believe there are. I will tell you
where I think they are.
Section two point three is from
2026, section ten point three and the title
has changed, adding the granting of to the
title. Because it just said before, it
just said rights and permissions.
Section 2 point three A, is from
2026 1031 one, and we moved this, there was
some section in the 2026 about government
type work, which is not subject to
copyright. That's now, since that was
really the explanation stuff, that's now
down in the explanation, section of
Paragraph 6. Let's scroll to that. All
the way down to section six.
This is contributions are not
subject to copyright. By the way, if
somebody has comments, go for the
microphone and bring up the comment so we
can talk about it as we go along. Don't
wait until the end.
So, this is a little bit of an
expansion from the text that was in 2026
about things like U.S. Government
documents which are not subject to
copyright, or that people have put stuff
into the public domain.
Does anybody have any comments on
that? Robert?
NEW SPEAKER: Big surprise.
NEW SPEAKER: Make sure you're
awake over there.
NEW SPEAKER: Actually, I believe
this is a big improvement of what was there
before. While you said that what was there
before in terms of public domain stuff was
just the U.S. Government part. It wasn't
really.
NEW SPEAKER: There wasn't really
anything about public domain. It was about
U.S. Government.
NEW SPEAKER: The assumption was
it was copyrighted and this now is much
better than what that was, so overall, this
part I'm reasonably content with.
NEW SPEAKER: This is Robert else
higher graph or something.
NEW SPEAKER: Back up to section
two three A. That's straight from the 2026
text section 1031, without any changes, but
I think there might be some minor wording
changes.
The section the two point three A
B, is from 2026 1031 one, where we added
the stuff that we've been using of late,
the last few years, the stuff that we
talked about at one of the IETF plenary
meetings, about the ability to say, you can
submit, the ability to submit an internet
draft with a notice on it that it's for, it
cannot, IETF does not have the right to
make derivative works. That was never
called out in 2026. It was something we
did at one of the plenaries. Any comments
on that?
NEW SPEAKER: Will you discuss
section two one three A.
NEW SPEAKER: Section three point
three? We can. I don't have it on my
chart, so why don't you just keep. Or do
it now? Three point three. I think, for
you, those Mikes are ready.
NEW SPEAKER: Right back there.
NEW SPEAKER: There's no three
point three.
NEW SPEAKER: Oh, right.
NEW SPEAKER: Three point two.
NEW SPEAKER: The reason I
mentioned that you may want to discuss
section point three, which you have not
written there, is it is has been one of the
major sources of context con contention in
the last years. That people use the escape
clause to the copyright, exemption, saying
I submit that to the IETF, but I take the
escape hatch and I'm not going to review
any property right or whatever. And the
part of contention is not that people have
the right to do that. It's whether when
they do that, working group can or cannot
take that into account.
NEW SPEAKER: I tried to put that
in there. And I don't have that on my
slides, but there is some text in there
about documents on the standards track, and
they cannot be ones where there's no
derivative clause. That's not something --
NEW SPEAKER: So we have to define
what is a document in this styles track.
And that's where, that's where the work --
you have there, like, can it be a working
group draft? Or does it have to be
NEW SPEAKER: I think you're
right, that we need to. And as the
vernacular goes, syntax, I did, this is one
of the things that is an extension of 2026.
There is an attempt in here to say that
working groups should not be working on
documents that have no derivative rights
clauses in them. Because in fact, if they
say no derivative rights, the working group
can't change them anyway, so they shouldn't
be trying to change them.
NEW SPEAKER: I think we should
be, the problem is that the current writing
obliges working group to make a decision
each time there's a document like that.
NEW SPEAKER: This is the specific
text. If you have, I think the derivation
s of that would be fine. It was attempted
to do what you're asking to do. Finance it
failed, it failed and let me know.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott, the reason --
NEW SPEAKER: We probably should
state names for the record keepers.
NEW SPEAKER: Thank you.
NEW SPEAKER: That was Christian.
I'm Robert else. The problem and the
reason why, the reason why this file is to
do what Christian wants it to do, which I'm
not sure I want that. Is that you don't
have the document until it's an RFC.
Internet drafts are not documents. So when
you talk about Standard track documents,
the nonstandard type document might seem to
cover everything else, but when it's done
like this, the wording implies that we're
talking about the same category of
documents. But we have other RFC's that
are nonstandard track documents so we need
standard track and nonstandard track RFC's.
The first time it occurs in that second
line, clearly it means it's standard. And
therefore, the second instance of documents
means RFC as well. The way one reads that.
It's the second line.
So, if you want to actually cover
internet drafts, you have to explicitly say
internet drafts. I'm not sure we want to,
but I think that would definitely be a
change in policy, rather than
clarification. But that's, you know, I
think it's up to the working groups to
decide what they want to do in this case,
rather than being told what they're allowed
to do.
NEW SPEAKER: That's actually a
fundamental question and it's an important
one.
NEW SPEAKER: Absolutely.
NEW SPEAKER: That this was not
discussed during the plenary discussions on
adding the ability to send in an internet
draft where it says there is no right to
build, to make derivative works, because at
the time we did that, the assumption was,
and the reason to include that escape
clause, was for the cases which are listed
here, re publications of standards
documents from other organizations, or pry
pry proprietary documents from corporations
and we don't have the rights to change
those. We did not consider the case that
somebody would put something into a working
group, with assumption that it was going to
be published by the working group as a
standards track information or any other
kind of document and put such a clause on
there.
Most area directors have been
telling me that working groups, working
groups should not be working on any
document that prohibits change, i.E., No
derivative works. But it's not written
there. If people believe that working
groups should be able to work on documents
that they can't change, then they should
make state so.
NEW SPEAKER: It probably would
help to have some explicit guidance here.
That's my personal opinion. But I know at
least one group had a major fight on
exactly this issue.
NEW SPEAKER: Simple.
NEW SPEAKER: You want to talk on
this topic?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes.
NEW SPEAKER: Why don't you talk.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Bill
Summerfeld, simple group working group
chair. What would be helpful to me, is
some text somewhere saying that a working
group or chair can decide not to accept a
document, which doesn't have the, allows
derivative works wording. Because I've
gone through a couple of those slightly
touchy negotiations with documents submit
terse about this. And it would be helpful
to say, no, no, here it says, I'm fully
within my rights to insist on derivative
works.
NEW SPEAKER: Now, just a new
answer a little bit. There's a difference
between that a working group husband not
work on anything, that they cannot modify,
I do derivative works on. And do what you
suggested which was give the authority to
the working group chair to denied decide
not to do that
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: Right. Because
someone who just reads what's written on
the web site
NEW SPEAKER: No, no. You're
missing the point.
NEW SPEAKER: Sorry.
NEW SPEAKER: You you asked are
does the chair have the discretion to
accept or not accept, and the alternative,
well, two alternatives, one is to say the
chair doesn't have that discussion. And
the other is to say, the chair doesn't have
that discretion because no working group
can work on this
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: I don't care which
we go with. You know, I can live with
either one. I'd actually prefer the no
working group works on there's no
derivative works on. But I don't see as
strong a need for that.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. John.
NEW SPEAKER: John Clen son.
Scott, it seems to me, there's at least one
and possibly two important cases which
we've hit in the past. That this doesn't
cover.
Let me try to explain the more
extreme one. Somebody comes in with an
individual contribution which is proposed
foregoing onto standards track. What they
say to us is, you don't get any rights to
derivative works unless you standardize
this and release it when it's published as
an RFC. We've had that problem in the
past. This doesn't address it. And it
seems to me that we need to be very, very
explicit about that case, one way or the
other. And not only does this not address
it, but the question, materials getting
into the bit over working groups who we
discussed in the last 5 minutes, doesn't
address it either.
NEW SPEAKER: Would you make a
suggestion on what we should say?
NEW SPEAKER: I'm happy to make
two contradict tree suggestions about what
we might say.
NEW SPEAKER: Make a suggestion
and we can talk about it.
NEW SPEAKER: I don't know what
the community wants to do.
NEW SPEAKER: Make a suggestion
and we can talk about it.
NEW SPEAKER: One suggestions is
that anything that is expected or hopes to
go into standardization has to be released
to the community the moment somebody makes
that proposals. The other suggestions is
that it doesn't get released to the
community unless somebody like area
director expresses at least minimal
interest.
NEW SPEAKER: The nuance in the
first one.
NEW SPEAKER: For example, they
talk about the applicability of the
technology. What you just suggested will
not cover those.
NEW SPEAKER: That's correct.
NEW SPEAKER: My person bias to
you is that working groups shouldn't work
on documents they can't change.
NEW SPEAKER: Again, the most
extreme case I'm worried about is something
which doesn't go to a working group. It
goes directly to the I S G. Now,
interestingly enough, the I S G, under what
I think you're proposing, the I S G can
change the rules, simply by either taking
the document and handing it to the working
group for evaluation or taking it to last
call, which operations and under two
different sets of rules. It seems to me
that's not wise.
NEW SPEAKER: David black. IP
storage co-chair. I think the crucial
opportunity in the working group process,
is the point which you allow an individual
submission or a submission to become a
working group dash zero zero draft. So
either here or in the guidance document,
spelling out that it's the work group
chair's responsibilities to enforce
whatever ones of Bill's two alternatives is
appropriate. At the point where the
working group chair is asked to approve the
dash zero zero of the document working
group draft would be useful guidance.
NEW SPEAKER: Thank you. I think
you were in line first.
NEW SPEAKER: Dan somebody. I'm
chairing the internet something working
group and also kind of communication on
project between IETF and I T G. I would
like to understand how the following
situation is covered. Where sometimes
required, actually asked by I E E E to take
some of their documents, for instance, MIB
s and provide advise, for the quality. And
point of view, I still actually would like
to keep a change controller on these
documents. And I'm not sure that the text
is right now reflects this situation.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, the Texas it
is right now actually does cover that, some
of the suggestions we've just had doesn't.
This particularly calls out the re
publication of works in other standards
organizations
NEW SPEAKER: Well, is this some
of the comments we have been made here,
doesn't reflect that. Because this is a
case where working group should work on a
piece of, on an internet draft, actually,
without changing, not directly. Where the
change comes from this document U
NEW SPEAKER: I think that's a
good point. One more comment from Dave.
Personally
NEW SPEAKER: Personally, I don't
believe and then we should take it to the
mailing list, because if we take this much
time on this, this particular point, we
won't have any time for patents. But maybe
that's a good idea.
NEW SPEAKER: This is a patent
thing.
NEW SPEAKER: Dave, somebody, I'm
co-caring the IETF working groups. The
fact, the requirement that the rights be
handed over to the IETF, in their entirety,
and the statement of what that means, I
think is probably pretty straightforward at
the conceptual level. I'm sure it's hard
at the legal level. But I don't think
anybody in the community says it has to be
handed over. The question came up about
when. And I think we need to be careful
about what we expect and demand.
The handing, I mean, if in fact
the property is worth having, and somebody
thinks it is, the people who have it, and
presumably, we do. Otherwise we wouldn't
want to work on it, then they just don't
want to toss it away. Handing it over to
us before we're committed to it is unfair
to them.
NEW SPEAKER: Handing it over too
late for us, is unfair to us; and so, my
real point is, there's a negotiation about
the handing over, and we need to respect
that fact and deal with it in the way that
people normally deal with negotiations.
It's not a hostile exchange, and
therefore, the negotiation doesn't need to
be adversarial. That means it's okay for
us to think about the guys on the other
side and think about what their needs are.
In an adversarial negotiation, we might not
want to do that. But I think we want to be
careful what we demand from the other side
so it's knots overly rigid. An example, if
they hand control over to us and we drop
it, then that property is lost.
NEW SPEAKER: No.
NEW SPEAKER: No and I don't think
that's fair.
NEW SPEAKER: No, there's nothing
that says, that if they put an internet
draft in, as a matter of fact, everything
says the opposite, they maintain full
rights to do anything they want with that,
outside of the IETF, or anything they want
to do. The question is what the IETF does
with that document. It's not lost. The
author still retains that right, and that's
covered in other text here.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott, I think --
NEW SPEAKER: I wasn't trying to
be
(Several people talking.)
NEW SPEAKER: If we want to be
NEW SPEAKER: This is, this is
says the IETF lawyer from somewhere is
working with us for a number of years. I
did say we're going to cut off after Dave,
because I want to move onto other topics,
but let's let George talk.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, thanks. George
Contreras, and this is just to clarify on
what Dave and John said before. The rights
at the IETF needs have to get granted like
immediately, when an idea is submitted to a
list, because when you have the list, the
IETF publishes the documents publicly, and
so you need the rights right then.
You know, it's not a matter of it
becoming a standard or advancing along the
standards track, but for the IETF to do its
work, it just has to have the rights right
away. That's all we're trying to do with
rights being granted to IETF. They're not
exclusive rights and it doesn't include
anybody else dealing with the materials,
but just gives IETF and the IETF people
what they need right from the start to do
the work. That's all.
NEW SPEAKER: We're going to
return to the question of 2026
clarifications later in the session. We
want to make sure we have time to get to at
least the possible change in the IPR
policy. So appreciate holding off until
then on this topic.
NEW SPEAKER: On another topic.
NEW SPEAKER: Go on.
NEW SPEAKER: You have to say who
you are and be terse.
NEW SPEAKER: I'm Rowen may and I
wanted to ask for the motivation, on
paragraph D and the defamatory remarks.
NEW SPEAKER: We have not gotten
there yet.
NEW SPEAKER: It looked like you
were.
NEW SPEAKER: We followed afford
reference, now we're going back. Section
two point three A.
This is new. Yes, two point three
A, the text right there is new just, it's -
- no, it's not new.
No, two point three C, that's the
new stuff. I can't even read my own
slides. That's new for the clarification
on trademarks.
Any comments on that?
NEW SPEAKER: I'm not sure --
NEW SPEAKER: You need to
NEW SPEAKER: Steve Tro bridge. I
don't worry about it quite as much on
trademarks but we may have a similar issue
when we get to patents. This section says
that when these are included in a
submission, that the rights were given to
the IETF. But that's sort of assumption
something that's not written there, that
the contributor has, can give those rights.
Owns those rights to award to the IETF.
And doesn't really preclude that
some third party, including somebody else's
trademark or service mark, and provides
rights in that way.
NEW SPEAKER: George may answer
this also, but there is text about, that
the contributor has to have the rights to
do what's listed here. But the case where
a third party is putting in an idea
describing somebody else's IPR and puts
down that the term is trademark, that is
not explicitly covered.
NEW SPEAKER: So on the trademark.
NEW SPEAKER: Eric. George.
NEW SPEAKER: Lawyers get
priority.
NEW SPEAKER: George is the lawyer
here. Any other lawyers who want to claim
to be lawyers.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, I George
Contreras, you know, on patents and
trademarks owned by third parties, I think
we'll get to all of that in the next
document. But you know, the grant here is
just, we're just really talking about the
grant to the IETF from the contributor. So
if the contributor doesn't have the right,
the necessary rights to grant to the
trademarks, well, then, you know, there's
really not that much you can do. But
that's really all this is talking about.
If there's some third party who is out
there who has trademarks in words that are
used in the IETF documents, they can,
they're not part of the IETF process, they
can show up and, you know, and they can
tell you stop. Possibly. But this is
really just asking for what the contributor
has. And he should just give you
everything that, you know, that he can.
NEW SPEAKER: Who was George
responding to?
NEW SPEAKER: Steven.
NEW SPEAKER: He did say who he
was.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes.
NEW SPEAKER: So this doesn't
explicitly say that it's only the
trademarks personally and reasonably known
to the contributor. I don't know if we
want to say that or do we want this part to
be stricter than the department side of
things?
NEW SPEAKER: That's a good point.
I'll put that to the list.
Bill Summerfeld, secure something
working group chair. This cover use of the
trademarks by the documents, if I
understand correctly.
NEW SPEAKER: This covers
trademarks in the IETF publication of
documents.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. One thing
that was problematic, in at least one case
was, there was some lack of clarity about
whether or not other implementers could use
a particular trademark in referring to the
name of a protocol. And I think it would
be helpful to avoid conflicts in the
future, to request a statement of yes, we
are, no, we aren't going to let other
people use this name for implementation.
NEW SPEAKER: So, s have a
protocol the IETF calls foo bar and the
question is whether, if Joe implements it,
can he call it foo bar.
NEW SPEAKER: Right, because foo
bar is a trademark of not the IETF, but,
Joe's bar and grille.
NEW SPEAKER: All right. George?
I think that's a good point.
NEW SPEAKER: That was an
excellent point, and it's a discussion that
we haven't really had integrate length.
And there's a big difference between the
IETF being able to use a trademark in the
IETF standards process, because the IETF
doesn't make or sell any products, and
really trademarks cover the right to use a
name in connection with the sale of a
product or service. So in the IETF
context, there's really not that much to
complain about.
When you implement a standard and
slap the name foo bar on, a real product
that's being sold, then the trademark owner
would, you know, theoretically have a right
to collect license fees and to stop people
who weren't paying from using the mark.
And it's the same discussion that you have
when you think about patents, trademarks
are just like patents in that regard.
So, you know, it sounds like maybe
we're proposing having a discussion about -
-
NEW SPEAKER: I think the proposal
was to have clarifying text which says that
persons, a submitter has trademark when
submitting a document with trademark in
there, has to state what the usage of that
trademark would be, in the future. I.E.,
It's only available for use in IETF
publishing documents, or other implement
terse can use it to describe their product
or whatever. The suggestions was to have a
requirement for such a disclosure.
NEW SPEAKER: I think that
probably goes in the patent document more
than it does here.
NEW SPEAKER: All right. One more
comment on this.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes. Just adding to
this, not all of us are lawyers.
NEW SPEAKER: You need to say who
you are.
NEW SPEAKER: Min networks.
NEW SPEAKER: Given the size of
the Internet community. I don't think we
are all lawyers to understand what's in
that clause A. And the limitation on it.
I think it's just that, if I understood,
you right, what it says here is that the
royalty free aspects and all those only
apply to IETF itself, like this
organization. And not necessarily the
vendors who are to build to the end
results, to the RFC's that are --
NEW SPEAKER: This is just,
actually, I should have clarified. This
document is supposedly only talking about
copyright. And trademarks. It is not
talking about patents at all. Patents are
in a different document. So this only
talks about text and reproducing text and
trademarks and reproducing trademarks.
NEW SPEAKER: Have patience we'll
get to the other documents.
NEW SPEAKER: All right.
NEW SPEAKER: Robert else again.
One brief comment. On this issue, since it
was just raced, it's on who gets the rights
out of this little issue. Can we have some
expectation or hope that since the rights
are only granted to the IETF to reproduce
documents in this sense, that we can stop
distributors from distributing every RFC
under the sun with their products.
NEW SPEAKER: No. Because that's
actually one of our longest held {tra} s
that RFC's, specifically RFCs are available
for anybody to reproduce. Particularly in
their entirety. Dave was going to talk
about substring those a little bit later
on. But the idea is that these have been
available. S R I from the very beginning,
from the early days of the internet, made
collections of RFC's and sold them, even
though you could download them for free.
And they made some bucks doing that and
that's fine. But we're trying to get this
stuff out. And we want to cut this
quickly, so can you be terse?
NEW SPEAKER: David Burkins. It
would be helpful if the lawyer could put
together some boiler plate, so you know, as
a normal sort of employee working for a big
organization, that you can say, I'm
participating in IETF, I want to author
this thing, I want to be, you know, squeaky
clean legally, oh I want some signed piece
of paper that the work organization has
given the rights to the IETF for this thing
that I've authored. And if there's like,
just some document that you can say, you
know, I want to give to my company lawyers,
and so it's all squeaky clean, that
certainly would be helpful.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, one proposal
that has been floated is that the internet
draft submission process be through a web
page. Which would interact with the author
to get an explicit acknowledgement of this,
and you can point to the corporate legal
beagles at the web page to see what they're
committing to. But that's an
implementation detail. But I think the
general question is an important one and we
need to go into it at some point.
NEW SPEAKER: I hope this is an
easy question. The wording says the
organization he or she represents, if any,
there's a tradition in the IETF that people
come representing themselves and not the
organizations that employ them. I'm
wondering exactly what the definition of
that is.
NEW SPEAKER: s That's --
NEW SPEAKER: One
(Several people talking.)
NEW SPEAKER: If I'm submitting
something, and I did it on Harvard time,
George?
NEW SPEAKER: You know, that's
exactly right, a lot of companies, the
companies I IP policy says anything you
develop using their computers or while it's
on their time, is going to be owned by the
company. Just getting the rights from the
contributor is not going to be helpful.
The company or organization has to grant
something too
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: If you could just
change it from represents to sponsors, if
you could just change it --
NEW SPEAKER: Who was before
David.
NEW SPEAKER: George spoke last.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Before
George. David.
NEW SPEAKER: Charlie. No, it
wasn't Charlie. Who was talking before
George?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, it was Charlie.
Charlie who forgot to say his name.
NEW SPEAKER: I'm sorry. I'm
Charlie cough Lynn.
NEW SPEAKER: Just, every time you
go to the microphone, say your name. Pre
tend you're a member.
NEW SPEAKER: David Burkins. Just
a, if it's legally okay, I would suggest
you say, instead of he or she represents,
to say the organization that sponsors them.
NEW SPEAKER: I think we can take
that to the list. The specific legal
nuance there may be case law dependent.
NEW SPEAKER: I would like to move
on. We should do these minor things on the
list. We are running tight on time here
and we haven't gotten to the fun part yet.
NEW SPEAKER: Let's see. Two
point four. This is from section 1031,
2026, added best of knowledge, rather than
assuming omissions.
Question before on two point four,
somebody had?
NEW SPEAKER: We'll get there.
NEW SPEAKER: It's a sub section.
NEW SPEAKER: Section two point
four A is from 2026, 1031, subparagraph
four, B is from subparagraph 5, C is from
subparagraph 7. And I think they're all
effectively the same as they were. Two
point four D is new.
Somebody had a comment on that.
That was cut off. The comment on this
NEW SPEAKER: It was Rowen.
NEW SPEAKER: No derogatory
remarks, it was cut off earlier. There you
are. You woke up. Get to the microphone.
NEW SPEAKER: Say your name. So
that if, you have to be blamed for the
question.
NEW SPEAKER: Rowen may. What's
the motivation for paragraph D?
NEW SPEAKER: Speak your name
again. So he can hear.
NEW SPEAKER: Rowen may.
NEW SPEAKER: Thank you. George,
do you want to answer that? This is your
paragraph.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, I mean, I think
the actual motivation was that this has
come up before, and there hasn't been an
effective way to police this kind of thing.
It seemed like just good practice that the
contributor says that they have
intentionally, this isn't inadvertant, but
they haven't intentionally posted an idea
which is just slandering of some other
company, or you know, something derogatory.
Or untrue or that it's illegal.
And, you know, hopefully, it
should be, you know, not controversial.
And this isn't common practice, but there
wasn't a mechanism in the past under 2026
to say that that kind of behavior violated
the IETF rules. So here it is. That was
the motivation.
NEW SPEAKER: Rowen.
NEW SPEAKER: You may have to turn
the microphone off.
NEW SPEAKER: Is there some
liability to IETF or ISUP again as a result
of that?
NEW SPEAKER: That's Rowen again.
NEW SPEAKER: George, the question
was, is there liability to the IETF if we
don't include this?
NEW SPEAKER: If you you don't
include it, no, not necessarily, well, I
guess, there are two stages. When the
contributor says something defamatory on
the IETF list, that's the contributor's
fault. But then, if IETF in the process
will reproduce it, re publish the
defamatory stuff, or, you know, the illegal
material, and yes, then, at that stage, if
the IETF keeps re producing it and doesn't
have an excuse to stop re producing it,
then there is some potential liability, if
you re publish stuff that you know to be
defamatory or untrue about somebody, or
that's illegal, yes, there is a risk to the
IETF.
NEW SPEAKER: Chris somebody. And
NEW SPEAKER: Christian. I think
that we would have to think twice before
deleting this paragraph.
NEW SPEAKER: For accepting this
paragraph. I mean, I look at the it in the
form, and I mean, does it mean that if I
goof in my math, I'm saying something
untrue and somehow illegal?
NEW SPEAKER: Potentially.
NEW SPEAKER: That's
intentionally, include.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, but it's very
hard to Gage intentions.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, we do have a
case out there of internet draft that has
bad math, which is questionable.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, it's also,
when you make, the point about which law,
the law of the country in which the guy is,
or the law of the country in which you
publish the document? I mean, that's
bizarre.
NEW SPEAKER: That's actually a
good point and that's come up in the
context dark dark George
(Several people talking.)
NEW SPEAKER: Could you say that
NEW SPEAKER: This is George.
That's why there's an intentional
requirement here. I mean, I think we all
agree that the laws are changing and the
laws are different in lots of different
countries. So this is kind of a minimum,
which is just to say that, the contributor
doesn't, hasn't intentionally put something
illegal in here, as a way to prevent people
from posting, you know, pornography, in if
form of an I D. The untrue, you know, on
the untrue piece, actually, I don't feel
that strongly about it and we might be able
to take it out. Because defamatory pretty
much covers it. It has to be untrue to be
defamatory. The untrue piece wasn't
intended to get at technical arguments that
other people just consider to be wrong.
It's really untrue statements
about another person or another company.
NEW SPEAKER: We probably should
cycle that so Rowen, come back. But let
Robert go first.
NEW SPEAKER: Robert else again.
I think George just answered my question in
that I was coming up to find out, that
untrue, what's clearly meant there is sort
of the in the defamation sense, rather than
untrue in the sense, where I've very often,
information in the drafts, which I
absolutely know to be untrue. The point is
to refute it. So you write this down, and
it's explicitly something which I don't
believe, and then I go into a paragraph and
say why this is wrong. And if the draft is
worded this way, then I wouldn't be able to
accept it, because I know it's untrue
statements.
NEW SPEAKER: We certainly want
wouldn't want to inhibit your ability to do
that.
NEW SPEAKER: Rowen again. My
major concern with this is just that, you I
thought maybe, you know, I'm not a lawyer,
but you might establish some precedent that
we have to do work to look at each internet
draft and each mailing list post, to see if
this is the case?
NEW SPEAKER: That is a good --
NEW SPEAKER: I would certainly
not want that to happen.
NEW SPEAKER: The precedent of
this, there's quite a bit of precedent on
this, and it's usually along the line of,
if we are notified, this is like bullet
boards, if they're notified that there's a
child porn picture in mailing list mumble,
then they've got some obligation to go take
it out. If we are notified, that there is
an Internet draft which has libel against
somebody else, we are probably, in the
United States, obligated to take it out,
whether or not we have this paragraph in
here, if we are notified of the but it does
not state that we have a positive
requirement to go look. Is that correct,
George?
NEW SPEAKER: This is George
speaking. In fact, this actually helps the
IETF, instead of hurts it, because this
way, the IETF can, if someone does show up
and say, IETF, you're re publishing these
defamatory statements about it me, at least
they can point to the paragraph and say,
look, we have a representation from a
contributor, that he wasn't posting
anything defamatory, but sorry about that,
and we'll take it down, or we'll do
whatever we were going to do. But this
doesn't impose a requirement on the IETF
any more than, you know, any of the
representations about the contribution not
printing copyrights or being owned by the
contributor or anything else.
NEW SPEAKER: I think we're going
to have to take this one to the list.
We're just way out of time on this topic.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. 2 four E is
also new, and this is, to accentuate the
trademark, that tell us us we have to have
the trademark.
The top section here is a new
explanation to try and clarify what's going
on here. Three Dot one, this is from
section 2026, section ten point 4 C, the
main change here, is miscellaneous changes,
there's two main changes. One is that the
one line copyright, now reads that portions
are copyright, rather than the old one,
which said the whole thing was copyright.
Which is never really been true. It's
portions that are copyright.
And the, specifically it calls out
that the authors retain rights, other than
as stated below, which basically, below is
what we've always had, of the ability to
publish, reproduce and anybody else to
reproduce.
In the bold text at the bottom,
one additional change has been added, that
is actually in some RFC's, it was
negotiated with one of the major
contributors to the IETF a few years ago.
The bold text was all directed at
a disclaimer of the internet society
society. And we've added the text that
says that the contributor also has the same
disclaimer.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott somebody
again. The, I know everybody does this and
puts this paragraph in all kinds of
agreements, and terms. But in some
jurisdictions, as I understand it, if you
put a paragraph just like this in, then it
ends up being void, because you're not
allowed to difficulties claim all
warranties. You really have to put, except
as provided by law, or some such thing into
the paragraph, in order to make sure that
some things that are implied by statutes
and can't be difficulties claimed aren't
attempted to be difficulties claimed.
Because if you try and difficulties claim
others
NEW SPEAKER: If one thing is
wrong, the whole thing is. George?
NEW SPEAKER: You know, that's
definitely true. I mean, most of those,
most of those public policies exceptions to
these disclaimers, relate to consumer
protection, and you can't difficulties
claim your rights when somebody gets hurt.
Our thought is, we're really talking about
standards here and not the implementations.
When companies go and implement these in
products that catch on fire or hurt people,
then, yes, then they have to be much more
aware of those kind of things.
But because this is global,
because it's difficult to, you know, keep
track of the laws of every country, you
know, we thought that it was okay to have
the statement, just written like this. But
we can discuss it on the list. There's
nothing wrong with saying, except as
prohibited by law. I mean, sometimes that
doesn't actually help. If the laws are,
you know, strict enough about this. But,
you know, again, it's a detail. There's a
lot of discussion we can have about that.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. You're the
last one on this topic.
NEW SPEAKER: Herb somebody. I
want to go back to a statement that Scott
made a little while ago, in particular,
about RFC's which I understand are covered
by this document as well as internet
drafts. That is, authors of RFC's those
selected subset of the people who have
contributed to the content of an RFC, since
RFC's are the big collaborative process in
the IETF. Appear to be granted rights that
other contributors to the RFC are not
granted. With regard to the ability to use
this document, create derivative works and
do other things. And I would think that
this is a problem. And should be re
visited.
NEW SPEAKER: It's not intended to
be the case. The term contributor is
further defined in the definition section.
And it covers, it should cover all the
people who have participated. Now, if you
reviewed and made some suggestions for
spelling corrections, in an internet draft,
you're certainly a contributor to that, and
whether that gives you the right to then
runoff and make a derivative of that, and
in some other standards body, that's a
legitimate question asked and we should
take it to the list.
NEW SPEAKER: Thank you.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. That's all
NEW SPEAKER: Wrong.
NEW SPEAKER: Section three Dot
two. Yes, this is new. This is taken over
from the boiler plate that we've had on the
submission of the generating of I Ds note
that's been on the IETF web page for a long
time. This is in from there, slightly
modified, in that form C doesn't allow you
to say that you're not publishing somebody
else's IPR, which the current boiler plate
text allows you you to say. I don't agree
with any of the disclosure or any other
rules, but I'm sending you this anyway.
And this no longer permits that. But the
rest is pretty much what they were in the
current boiler plate.
Okay. On to the next document.
Actually let me go back for a second.
Okay. The next document,
NEW SPEAKER: Again, it's a design
team product. This was much more at the
last minute than the previous one. It is
about patent rights in abbreviation. It's
mostly wording tweaks. There's a few other
things and I'll get to those as we go
along.
I added this section, which I
claim to be the basic principles of the
current patent rules in 2026 are designed
to implement. First of all, the IETF as a
body, and the I S G, by the way, won't say
that somebody's IPR claim is good or bad,
valid or invalid. We have no requirement
on us to do so.
It also, this is what is going on
now, that a working group can decide to use
technology that somebody has claimed IPR on
it, if they decide to do so. Its left to
the, specifically left to the discretion of
the working group to decide what to do
there. It is not a blanket rule from up
high that you can only use IPR free
materials, or you can only use materials
which people have granted reciprocal
licenses or patent pools or anything else.
It just says the working group has the
discretion to consider this.
And then, C, it says the working,
in order to do this, the working group has
to know what the hell is going on. So it
enforcees disclosure. Dave, you're first.
NEW SPEAKER: Dave Crock err. In
the I T U, the, there's a requirement
pretty much like this. And what is
disclosed is pretty much the kind of
language here. Somebody says, we have or
we know of, I can't remember which, IPR
that we believe is related to this
activity. Period. That's the total
disclosure.
NEW SPEAKER: Let me ask Dave
actually, to hold back on that, because
that is actually in a further thing about
talking about how disclosures are made and
what are disclosures and things like that.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay.
NEW SPEAKER: David black. B is
little subtle because the working group's
decision that somebody is warranted is of
course subject to further review,
particularly by I S G as part of the
standards process. And I guess, I may not
be for this document but for the guidance
document mentioned in the charter, the more
that we can say about guidelines for what
will or will not be considered warranty
would be very useful, in particular, the
IETF seems inform set a a fairly high bar
for use of security algorithms and
protocols for which IPR claims lie.
NEW SPEAKER: That is correct and
that's a good point. Just as sort of a
meta point here, we have this document does
not, is not yet clear enough on one aspect.
It does have to be clarified.
We have X conditions. First
condition is David writes an internet
draft, which has IPR on it, in it, that is
from a patent David holds or his employer
holds. That's Case No. One. Case No.
Two is that Christian puts in an internet
draft and David notices it and believes
that it, in whatever level of faith, that
that document has, is covered by IPR that
David has or his employer has, and a third
case is, that there's an internet draft
sitting there and people have been working
on it maybe it's even in RFC now. And
somebody outside the IETF process, and oh,
in the second case, David and Christian are
both participating in the IETF and the
activity.
The third case is somebody outside
the IETF notices this internet draft or RFC
and says, wait a second, I've got IPR on
it. In the first case, it is not
unreasonable to talk about putting
requirements on for quite detailed
disclosure. That's what Dave was starting
to talk about. Form letters of what the
patent rights you're going to give and
things like that, that's quite feasible.
The second case, where it is me
claiming that that idea over there has my
IPR on it, that gets a little trickier.
And the third case, it's very hard to
impose any particular constraints on the
person disclosing that they have IPR in the
case. We want to keep track, keep in mind,
a high order bid here, which is that we
have had situations in the past, and expect
to have them in the future, where patent,
IPR claims are, let's say, enthusiasm about
what they cover. And that could be because
the claimant truly believes this. And
wants to inform the working group of this.
And wants to collect royalties or maybe
wants to give it away. Whatever.
But another possibility is that
the claimant is claiming in not necessarily
good faith. So that the aim of the claim
is to disrupt the activity of the working
group, to either slow down the process, or
to guide the working group subtlely to use
a different technology. Which in the
background, the claimant has either a
product out there, or has product in
future, and well along in development so
that it's an effort to gain the standards
process by making a claim.
We need to keep that in mind.
You're next.
NEW SPEAKER: T J somebody. I
think you just brought up a lot of good and
interesting points. There may be another
sub case, in Case No. Three. That there's
a draft that has technology, that somebody
outside or inside the IETF has, and I may
know about that. And according to what it
says under C here, all participants are
required to disclose any IPR, not
necessarily IPR that they are somehow
involved with.
NEW SPEAKER: We tried, let's hold
that for a minute, because we're trying to
address that later on.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Also I had a
request about the term IPR, is this a
patent or copyright or trademark, something
that's been granted or registered,
something that's been filed? Into the
NEW SPEAKER: The intent of this
document, compared to the other document,
this document was intended to only refer to
patent rights. But that's also patent
applications. Patent applications and
patent granted, it is not copyright on
pieces of text. This does need to be made
clear, because a number of people have been
confused.
NEW SPEAKER: As I'm sure you're
aware, it might be difficult to require to
people to disclose information about patent
applications.
NEW SPEAKER: The current 2026
rules, which this attempts to carry over,
is that if you cannot disclose the
existence of IPR, either because your
company says, no, you can't talk about that
patent or application, or whatever, then
you must not participate in any discussion
about the technology.
It does not say, and this may be
subject to review, but the rules we've been
operating under since 2026 was done, do not
say that you are required to disclose
something your employer tells you you
cannot. But if you cannot disclose it,
then you cannot participate in the
discussion. You cannot help that
discussion either go towards or away from
the technology. You just can't participate
at all.
Even sit anything the room is
probably suspect. You certainly can't
contribute to the mailing list or get up to
the microphone. So that's what the current
rules are, specifically recognizing that
not everybody can disclose everything.
NEW SPEAKER: I'm just not sure
that a patent application is tantamount to
IPR, until it's granted.
NEW SPEAKER: The meta point here
is that the working group needs to know
what's going on, and if the patent
application is in, it's useful to know
that.
NEW SPEAKER: Steve Tro bridge. A
couple of things. One is a case that I
think comes up a little bit more commonly,
and that's the, if I put something in an
internet draft, I may or may not know if
the organization I represent has any
intellectual property that covers it.
NEW SPEAKER: That's also
specifically talked about later. So why
don't we defer that point, if that's the
point you're making, until later when we
talk about that particular topic.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. And then the
other, just a followup to the point on
patent applications, if in market, I know
that my organization has a policy, or
perhaps my organization is, that I'm always
willing to license everything I contribute,
and can I still participate in the process,
with something where I may hold off on
disclosing a particular patent
applications, because of the
confidentiality requirements of patent in
various countries.
NEW SPEAKER: That is a legitimate
question. I think we should take it to the
list because it's not easy to resolve. I
think it's a very good question.
NEW SPEAKER: Turning to --
NEW SPEAKER: You've got to say
who you are.
NEW SPEAKER: Oh. I already know
who I am. I'm Al sister something I think.
NEW SPEAKER: People taking the
notes are not facing the Mike phones.
NEW SPEAKER: Why not? They can
turnaround.
NEW SPEAKER: I want to return to
an earlier point. The IETF has a decision
process. It's kind of long wind and hard
to describe in a single sentence. I think
we should try to use the language, the IETF
can can decide, instead of saying a
particular piece of the IETF position as
it's involved here.
NEW SPEAKER: I think it's a very
good suggestions. So we'll change working
group to IETF.
NEW SPEAKER: A couple, Andy
somebody. A couple of concerns about
principle C. One is the potential for this
becoming a fishing expedition, somebody
raising an issue in a working group which
really is not intended to be germane to the
working group but to flesh out IPR claims
for some purpose that doesn't have to do
with the working group. That ought to be
specifically called out as not requiring
disclosure, or if there's some confusion on
the part of whether that should require
disclosure, there be some process for
saying, no, this really doesn't belong in
the working group, and no claims need to be
made against this. Second is, for those
that --
NEW SPEAKER: Before you get into
second. One of the things that's come out
of the I published this internet draft, is
a number of people have come in on the when
you need to disclose things, as you just
did. And there have been a number of
discussions for clarifying text to be added
to say, under what conditions you actually
have to disclose, and that sounds like a
good thing to add. It will be on the list
as talking about that point.
NEW SPEAKER: The second point for
anyone that works for a company with large
IPR holdings, they may have, some of those,
s that they know about, are pretty broad.
And the difficulty we have is oftentimes,
I'll give you an example of one that I'm
aware of. Anything that uses a touch tones
a menu system, it would be almost
impossible for you me to do work in
anything that, any working group, that
works around voice, because it seems like
that would be by this language, use of a
particular technology, or --
NEW SPEAKER: I think that's part
of the same question question. The higher
order bid is, working groups should know
about any IPR, that an implementer would
have to be aware of, in a licensing
environment. So if your employer believes
that somebody implements a SIP phone, that
doesn't use tones over the wire or uses
hums or whatever it does, if your IPR
department believes that somebody who
implements that is going to have to get a
license from you, you should tell us about
it. That's the concept.
NEW SPEAKER: So if the idea is,
you know your IPR department is not
concerned about side cases that, where
there's, you know, we all know patents have
been granted that are extremely broad. And
if there's a notion that you know that
there's absolutely no intention to go after
people, but yet, you have to disclose it,
sometimes that affects the work of of the
working group and that's what I'm concerned
about.
NEW SPEAKER: Let's put that on
the list, because that's a good point and
others have raced it in e-mail.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott real somebody.
Regarding the fishing expedition, I think
it's a moot point. But really, you know,
that decision doesn't matter.
NEW SPEAKER: What matters.
NEW SPEAKER: We're cutting off
the discussion with the people at the Mike
now.
NEW SPEAKER: Is the technology
adopted by the working group. If it
becomes a draft, then it's not a fishing
expedition anymore. That's already the
point you have to start thinking about it.
On the other hand, going the other
way, if somebody puts in a claim and the
working group decides it's in bad faith,
well, the working group doesn't get to
decide that, first of all.
NEW SPEAKER: The courts do.
NEW SPEAKER: And secondly, what
would we do? You know, there is no
enforcement. So I'm not sure that there's
any need to have anything about that in
this document at all. I think the one
sentence you have in here, that some claims
are disingenuous are about all you get.
NEW SPEAKER: I'll take that to
the list. I've seen that comment before.
NEW SPEAKER: Dave Allen March
tell. I'm getting into the scenario.
About potentially disingenuous. At least
in the United States, you have one year
from disclosure to apply for IPR. And I
don't know how you're actually going to
deal with that scenario, but that's real.
NEW SPEAKER: Good thing think
about. And you have text discussion?
NEW SPEAKER: It's almost to the
point where kind of the universal
disclaimer that reserves the right to
pursue IPR, probably should be just about
attached to anything. And if the thing is
still around a year later with no actual
disclosure, then that's released.
NEW SPEAKER: Scheduled on point.
We are now at the point where Scott was
supposed to be finished with the draft that
he has not yet had a chance to put up on
the screen.
NEW SPEAKER: I have a quick
comment. I have a problem with the word
any in the third to last line up there.
All parts painting in working groups must
disclose --
NEW SPEAKER: That's a
clarification. This is the meta concept.
We get down to the actual text later on.
Which is where you would want to make sure
that those words are right. This is sort
of like the concept.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. So, later on,
there will be an opportunity to go into
this point deeper?
NEW SPEAKER: Well, there's places
where that, that's sort of the, that's the
introduction. And there's a place where
the rule sets are done. And that's where
that's really important, to get that right.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay.
NEW SPEAKER: My name is James
wood land and my current employer is apple
computer.
NEW SPEAKER: Rather than current
employer, current employers.
NEW SPEAKER: Well. It's a bunch
of people, not one person.
NEW SPEAKER: I know we like to
think of corporations as actually being
these articles of people. But I don't. So
I'm a little concerned about it. Paragraph
C here, where it says, all participants in
the working group must disclose existence
of IPR. And this isn't just IPR like
patent rights or patent applications. I
filed. This would be patents or patent am
cases that my employer potentially have
filed. So, the hypothetical situation that
has me concerned is I'm participate
anything a working group, and I think I'm
participating in good faith, because I
don't know about any of apple computer
patents.
NEW SPEAKER: There's specific
text later onto address that.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Perhaps I
should see that text.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes.
NEW SPEAKER: We did cut off the
discussion on this topic.
NEW SPEAKER: He's trying to find
the right place in the dock: It's a little
harder when the left hand edge is cut off.
Where the numbers are.
We switched to P D F to get as
large a font as we can.
NEW SPEAKER: That's clarifying.
Right? Okay. 22 one. This is from
section 2026, section 1031, added a note
to, about the inclusion of the I D header
boiler plate stuff.
22 two one A, now, the sub bullet
one under there is a scope thing. So
there's a scope thing that's been added to
that, a scope of knowledge. Any issues on
that? You're standing up to do something,
Scott?
NEW SPEAKER: Well, does, 22 one A
is a lot better than the introduction.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes.
NEW SPEAKER: And in fact, it
conflicts a little bit. And I'd like to
deprecate a lot of what you say.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, make those
suggestions on the list. I really really
want to deal with the body. But I'm fine,
but the introduction was added before the
body and it should have been added after
the body.
22 one A, we did that. B, that's
straight from 2026 1031 7, section three A.
This, in 2026, one of the biggest
issues with 2026, has been the confusion
and actual internal contradiction between
whether the rules apply to only standards
track documents or apply to all documents.
One of the issues about that, we've already
heard about this morning, a document
doesn't get standards track until it
actually gets approved. And the other is,
well, you actually have documents that
start off as informational or experimental,
which later on, get switched to standards
track and you don't want to be suffering
because that happens. This paragraph has
removed the limit that it's standards track
documents.
Section three B is from 2026 ten
32 B. Section three C is from ten 32
Section C and it's changed the language,
from the I S G knows, to the i.E., S G has
been informed and it may act on its own,
John.
NEW SPEAKER: That's John, sore
NEW SPEAKER: Sorry, I don't
remember my name at all. In making that
change to clarify the difference, the
standards tracks document, you immdediately
introduce the question, what constitutes an
IETF document. And I'm happy to work with
you off line on text, but our general
principle has been that informational
documents going to the RFC editor are not
IETF documents. And I wanted to raise that
here in case anybody wants to argue.
NEW SPEAKER: That's true. The
documents can be can be submitted to the
working group or I E S G or area director.
Or through the I E S G if it's for
informational or experimental. And John
raises a good point and we should think
about it. Go ahead.
NEW SPEAKER: Tom tail or, nor
tell, I note the phrase there, in the
middle, use dristributed exercise under the
rights, with respect to under openly
specified terms, I'll skip the rest of the
thing there. Has that openly specified
been there all along?
NEW SPEAKER: I believe it has.
I'm not positive. George can can look that
up.
NEW SPEAKER: It simply caught my
eye. Thank you.
NEW SPEAKER: It has been brought
up on the list and also private mail. But
openly specified is not openly specified.
So we may need to address that.
There was one other thing in this
paragraph I should have said is that we
added a note for the working group taking
into account the IPR taking into account
for the statement. That was not in the
previous version.
NEW SPEAKER: Aaron fall being F A
L K. What and who is the IETF executive
director?
NEW SPEAKER: It's, the IETF
executive director is Steve coy yeah right
now. It's a formal role and it's Steve coy
yeah. It's also an e-mail address, which
doesn't happen to be executive director.
It happens to be IETF secretary. I don't
know how that happened, but history on our
friend.
NEW SPEAKER: The informal answer
is that it's the person who actually gets
paid to do all the stuff that the
volunteers don't have to do
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: Section three point
one and three point two are missing in
action. My counting algorithm seems to
have failed. Section three point three,
this is from 2026 section ten three three.
Change assumption to presume. And extended
the invitation for information from, to any
time, not just during the last call period.
And it was expanded to cover our Internet
drafts.
Section four A, this is clarified
I E S G roles to seek out IPR, and just
make that a little clearer, added a pointer
to the IPR on line directory that it's been
suggested that it should be something like,
like the current location it or something.
And section four C, added a pointer of the
on line IPR directory.
Now, can you search for
reasonably? Okay. This is the question
that came up a couple of times and I pushed
it to later. Reasonably and personally
known, you have to disclose things that are
reasonably and personally known and this is
the definition of it. The idea here is
that you know about it, or you should know
about it by scope of your job. Your
company cannot purposely keep you in the
dark by keeping you from disclosing. But
this specifically does not require that you
or your company do an exhaustive patent
search of your companies archives. That
was a question by a couple of people, does
anybody want to address that? Here we go.
NEW SPEAKER: I think this
NEW SPEAKER: Name, name.
NEW SPEAKER: My name is James
wood young and my employers are apple. I
think this is the actual section that you
referenced.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes.
NEW SPEAKER: When I brought this
topic up last. And having just reviewed
it, I'm not sure this completely addresses
my ongoing concern. Because I work for an
organization that famously
compartmentalizes itself. And this way we
do that, it may not be widely understood
outside the company.
NEW SPEAKER: I don't know if it's
understood within the company. That's a
big step.
NEW SPEAKER: I think that's true.
I'm relatively new. So I'm not entirely
certain I have a good grasp of the
situation. So, the it should be reasonable
that I might know something about a patent
or a a patent application. Who is the
judge of what's reasonable there?
NEW SPEAKER: I think that's
actually a very good thing. The particular
term, reasonable and personally known,
comes from case law. I don't know the case
law. When 2026 was originally done, this
is original wording from 2026 --
NEW SPEAKER: Right, my main worry
is, at some point I'm going to be deposed
and somebody is going to ask, what did I
know and when did I know it.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, that doesn't
sound like a career goal.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, I know. And
NEW SPEAKER: But George, do you
want to address where this wording came
from, and what reasonably is?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, George
Contreras. Yes. Scott is right. I mean,
you can't really put too many rules around
reasonably. Because the cases are going to
differ, you know, every set of facts is
going to be different.
You know, and every company is
going to be different. Like you said.
Personally, I think, is clear what whether
you actually know about it. You know, but
reasonably is there just to make sure the
companies don't keep people intentionally
in the dark. Things that you should know
about, in the course of your normal duties
as an engineer or standards developer for
the particular company that you work for.
I think is, you know, I think is as clear
as it's going to get. And then, when
you're deposed, the thing you're supposed
to do is tell the facts, and if this is
actually some kind of trial, you know, the
fact find err just gets to decide whether
or not it was reasonable, based on what all
the totality of the facts are. I'm not
sure that there's going to be, you could go
on for pages, trying to find what
reasonable was, and I'm not sure that you
would ever get to an end point that
everybody was happy with.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. I suspect
that part of the my motivation here is
that, I think that a lot of this is aimed
at trying to flush out patent claims and
patent applications as early in the
standards development process as possible.
And I think that's a very, very good goal.
I just suspect that, what my fear is that
we may need to do something much more
radical than what this document suggests or
specifies in order to flush out IPR claims
early in the process and I don't know when
the right time is to offer that radical
proposal I have.
NEW SPEAKER: We're over the
agenda time. I do believe there's a a lot
around this. Notice and failure to provide
notice and things like that. They're going
to take a lot of discussion and in some
cases, it's the only, the most of the
suggestions actually involve significant
changes to 2026. I was told not to make
them in this set of drafts.
NEW SPEAKER: I actually don't
know whether I have to propose would be,
would require a radical change.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, if you can
propose it in 20 seconds,
NEW SPEAKER: Well, I think
basically, what I would propose is that, we
might benefit from consortium of big
industrial players, funding the defense and
claiming of intellectual property that
belongs to the Internet society.
NEW SPEAKER: That comes under the
heading of change of policy.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, I think it's
an interesting idea and I think that's not,
let's not start that here, but it's
actually very good that you state it
because that's the kind of thing that I've
been hearing. I've been hearing that,
patent pools, requiring people to license,
provide free licensing, provide --
NEW SPEAKER: Scott, Scott.
NEW SPEAKER: It's a lot of
requirements, but this is a lot of, there's
a lot of noise down that channel.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, then I'm
bringing a little more and I'll sit down
now.
NEW SPEAKER: Thank you.
NEW SPEAKER: John tabs, where I
work is probably irrelevant, the one thing
I have, where I have worked, I've been very
intimately understanding dilemmas of trying
to define what is reasonable and personally
known. And probably, some interesting
cases, I personally have seen, is where the
patent author himself doesn't even know the
scope of his own claims, because normally,
especially in big companies, the patent
author will submit something and then a
lawyer will then extend it extensively.
The patent author doesn't really
understand. And I have personally had seen
lawyers direct the patent author to say he
cannot make this claim, because he doesn't
understand patent law well enough to make
that assertion.
So, I think, while the intent here
is well placed, the reality is, it's very,
very difficult for any individual to make
this, to make a definitive conclusion. And
I think people are having unrealistic
expectations that this process will
actually change the dynamics fundamentally.
NEW SPEAKER: Final comment.
NEW SPEAKER: Jim wrinkle.
Actually, three short comments.
Intersection two, you talk, you use the
word make a contribution, whereas down
here, you specifically use the phrase
submit a document or participating in
discussions. I think we need to be
consistent there. And in particular, I
would like to see a very complete
enumeration or definition of what is
covered or what is not.
The reason for the concern is that
even if I don't submit an internet draft,
because of the nature of the way we do
work, with extensive discussion in e-mail
lists, I may make very substantive comments
and suggestions in e-mail that later get
incorporated by somebody else into another
internet draft, and --
NEW SPEAKER: Time.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay.
NEW SPEAKER: The point is well
taken. Consistency, apparently wasn't my
goal in writing this. It should have been,
but it was at the last minute. In this
other document there is a definite
contribution,
( Definition of contribution. And
that's where this should be discussed. )
And we do need to move on. You
have two more comments, they're short,
right?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes. I'll drop one
of them. But the one that I'm greatly
concerned about here is the phrase that
says that if I know about stuff, but am
constrained from disclosing it, I can't
participate. A particular situation that I
am in is that I was formerly employed by a
company that has technology that covers
virtually everything the IETF is concerned
about, and I know about it, but my exit
agreement with that company prevented me
from disclosing it. Does that mean that I
am now prohibited from participating in the
IETF?
NEW SPEAKER: I hope not. All
right. That was attempted to be addressed.
In a previous part. Which described when
you need to disclose, which it does say
something along the line of your,
basically, the gist of it is, you're going
to benefit or your employer is going to
benefit. If it's your previous employer,
that wouldn't fit the letter of that
particular text but let's look at that on
the line. Because I did try and address
that. I may not have.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. I'm way over
my time and the chairs are about to yank
me, but I want to say a couple of things.
What I was asked to do today was to show
the differences between 2026 section ten
and what I've got in here. I did not, was
not asked to and we certainly don't have
time to go into all of the explanation text
below. Let's try to clarify all those
things, which, some of which we've been
addressing with points made here. Some are
not. There's going to be a lot of
controversy over those. That's going to
have to be done on the mailing list. We
don't have time today.
NEW SPEAKER: Before you sit down.
This is K R E. Could you scroll up to the
aim of the document. The last line. I
mean, really, the last line.
NEW SPEAKER: The whole document.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes. The whole
document.
NEW SPEAKER: Bradner?
NEW SPEAKER: No. Keep going.
That's it. I want to know, what that's all
about.
NEW SPEAKER: I'm sorry. Scott
has IPR and can't disclose that
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: I sent the draft in
e-mail, just, to Steve. And I don't know
where it said, why it said end of forwarded
message. There's no dark cloud though.
And I'm going to get the hell off stage.
NEW SPEAKER: Actually, if you
look at a number of internet drafts. It
has to do with how the secretary posts
them.
NEW SPEAKER: The discussion was
cut off. Because I don't have any, I used
all the time.
NEW SPEAKER: We had a couple of
other presentations. Dave Perkins is a
very short thing but it's such a good idea,
it's a no brain err and I think we can get
it out of the way very quickly.
NEW SPEAKER: Thanks. Hopefully,
again, this is a no brain err, so let's go
to the next slide.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. So, a lot of
us in the S M P area, we put MIBs into RFC,
if we want to use MIB in RFC, we grab the
RFC, extract the parse able content, and
modify it, if needed. And then some of us
like to include that extracted parse able
content in a package that we send out to
users.
And so that's what we do. And
sometimes we have to go and modify this
parse able content. And we might have to
do it because we need to port it to a
different environment. There's bugs,
sometimes, it's getting better. But
sometimes we have to fix some bugs, and
then sometimes, depending on what we want
to do with it, if we want to subset it, we
don't need the whole MIB, we just need a
part of it. So, in looking at 2026, it's
not clear to us that we can do this. It's
certainly clear that we can extract it and
use it for our own personal use, but it's
not clear that we can modify what we've
done and re distribute it. So that's
really what the problem is. Modifying and
re distributing.
So here's ideally what we'd like
to see. That 2026 successor would have in
it, so that as long as we do these four
things, which is identify where we got it
from, include whatever the latest right to
use and copyright is, and then say whether
we modified it or not, and then if we did
modify it, we'd like to have people be good
citizens and have to send a message back to
the RFC editor to say that, we did this.
So that maybe the working group can fix the
bug or make the parse able content a little
bit more general so that it can be used in
multiple environments.
So, that's it.
NEW SPEAKER: Dave.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott Bradner. I'm
supposed to follow my own rules here. I
did include text in, and I think it's the
first submission document, that is
attempting to deal with some of these, the
ability for example, to pull MIBs and use
them, and the description for MIBs and use
them where specifically called out. For
what it's worth, I'm a little worried about
the ability to capriciously modify, doing
something like bug fixes is one thing. But
doing something like extensions is another
things. So I think this needs more work,
but let's not do it here.
NEW SPEAKER: Just to clear it up,
this was immediately obvious to me, because
I used to be in the same business Dave is
in. Sometimes MIB compilers generate the
output we need to annotate the MIB and it's
not a question of modifying the contents
for public purposes, just in order to work
the compiler, you have to add stuff that
wasn't in the MIB originally.
NEW SPEAKER: That's not a change.
NEW SPEAKER: Right. Okay.
NEW SPEAKER: We had one other
person who had a presentation. Max, I
think. Max, are you here? I don't know
who max is. So I wouldn't recognize max if
he walked upright now.
NEW SPEAKER: Going once.
NEW SPEAKER: Going once. Going
twice. Okay. I guess we are now at the
grand free for all. What do you want to
change about the IETF's IPR.
NEW SPEAKER: Can we just go down
rows.
NEW SPEAKER: Do be warned, we are
going to cut this off, because we want to
re focus at the end, we hope, relatively
non contentious things, on the proposed
charter.
NEW SPEAKER: Choose a Mike.
NEW SPEAKER: Sorry.
NEW SPEAKER: David black.
Hopefully, this will be reasonably non
contentious. Steve mentioned earlier the
existence of sort of blanket disclosures.
Had an interesting experience in which, in
the middle of work group operations, a, one
of the companies that submitted blanket
disclosure basically backed away from it.
Now, they were within their rights to do
so, but I think what we're going to need,
to get here, and this is probably something
for the guidance document, is some text to
spell out exactly what the blanket
disclosures do and do not cover.
Because like I said, while they're
apparently within their rights to do so,
this has to do with who proposed something
in the third party problem, we still had a
pleasant surprise when the blanket
disclosure did not cover what some of us
thought it might cover.
NEW SPEAKER: Randy, bush. I
asked a question earlier, not here, but, I
think it's important to think about what
our goals are. And I would like to phrase
a question this way and I don't expect an
answer at this point. Completely, but
maybe make a little progress in poisoning
people's mind. If the IETF's goals were to
further facilitate widespread
implementation and inter operation,
especially by making sure that small people
have the ability to implement, et cetera,
what would we, how could we minimally and
reasonably change our process? Are there
small reasonable things we can do to our
process to facilitate this? So far, the
answer I've gotten is, to formalize our
disclosures a little more. So that the
disclosure form would say, which kind of
licensing, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry
or nuts, are you willing to do, and get
more, be more specific about what your
actual patent claim is. And if anybody can
help me think further on this, I appreciate
it.
He said his name. I don't have a
change to suggest. I have a change to
request not get done. I didn't have a
chance before, because the discussion was
sort of cut off, but Harold stood up before
and suggested that we change from the
working group makes the decision, to the
IETF makes a decision. And Scott sort of
agreed on some of these issues. The
problem with that is that, the IETF as a
whole, as a decision making process is
incredibly slow and clumsy. And attempting
to get the IETF as a whole to make a
decision on just about anything, takes
forever.
And if we, if we're discussing
here, whether a working group should look
at a document or not, waiting for the IETF
to go through last call and see whether
anybody wanting to object, has the IETF
made a decision, the working groups will
get nothing done. I sort of understand the
point in what was going on there, but it
shouldn't be exclusively the working group
who gets the make the decisions and
somewhere along the line the IETF has to be
involved, but just changing from the
working group to the IETF will be the
absolutely wrong thing to do. The whole
IETF hasn't said we can do something.
NEW SPEAKER: I think what you're
looking for is to push as much of the
workload as possible for the day to day
work decisions down to the working group.
But the IETF has to clearly be involved in
the higher decisions.
NEW SPEAKER: Comments?
NEW SPEAKER: Is this a direct
response?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. My intent was
not to stop the working group from
considering things. But we have cases
where somebody has to decide on individual
submissions. Someone has to override the
working group when it turns out that
there's an IETF consensus that is different
from the working group consensus. Somebody
has to handle appeals and all that. I
mean, our general process is that the
working group decides, and if it's wrong,
we have methods to deal with that. That
was the thing I was trying to capture by
saying IETF decides.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, sure. It's
just if we make a trivial change to the
wording, it won't come out like that
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: Can we say something
like the working group can recommend.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes. It's just as
long as --
NEW SPEAKER: Let's take it to the
list.
NEW SPEAKER: The wording.
NEW SPEAKER: My co-chair
suggested that perhaps away to manage this
is to have the microphone that that be the
new topic and that be the response Mike.
Unless there are any violent objection, I
so declare it.
NEW SPEAKER: Bill Summerfeld,
secure group working group chair. I'd like
to encourage the development of, you know,
basically a set of questions you ask
somebody submitting a document, for working
group consideration, you know, do you know
patents or do you know of patents and so
forth. Not having it written down in 2026
and so forth, is one thing. But it's easy,
it's sort of easier from a mechanical
standpoint if, you know, there's sort of a
checklist.
NEW SPEAKER: As Scott said, we're
con contemplating a web based submission
and this is an implementation issue rather
than architecture issue.
NEW SPEAKER: Anybody need the
blue sheet?
NEW SPEAKER: Was there a followup
question?
NEW SPEAKER: I think that's
actually a followup question from a
previous point; is it not?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes. I wanted to
follow up to about three speakers ago, at
the other microphone.
NEW SPEAKER: Identify yourself,
please.
NEW SPEAKER: This is Steve Tro
bridge. Concerning the issue, I guess I
object to the characterization of the
particular issue, because I know, I've been
informed of what it was about, as backing
away from a blanket disclosure. I think we
need to be clear about what blanket
disclosures cover. And in this case, it
covers the submissions of the organization.
And I think that many companies, including
my own, represent that anything that they
contribute to the process is available
under rand. And the question that I think
we sort are going to try to cover on the
list was regarding third party submissions.
And I think we need to be careful about
saying that any third pair can contribute
something that requires your IPR, and
somehow you're obliged to offer free rand
license for something the third party may
have contributed as well that requires IPR.
So that's an important question.
NEW SPEAKER: Follow up?
NEW SPEAKER: Not follow up.
NEW SPEAKER: Are you a followup
at the back Mike?
NEW SPEAKER: No.
NEW SPEAKER: Then you're in the
wrong line.
NEW SPEAKER: Andy. I'm a W three
C advisory committee hat on, and I'm going
to say, if there's anything I've learned
from watching this similar process, which
is in its second year, likely to drag onto
a third, of revision of IPR policy, it's
that, the successful approaches all seem to
rely on what I call the two Chinas, or one
China approach. And that is, there are,
there's a complete separation between what
can be the goals for licensing and the
goals for the process of bringing a
standard together. And the actual end
result, which may be strongly influenced by
third parties who were not part of the
submission. In which you you, or any of
the process for that matter. And what you
end up with is the danger in, especially
being too explicit about the policy, is
that you create an incentive for, or better
yet, it's better to be a non member than a
member. Or a non participant than a
participant. Non participants have more
rights and more ability to disrupt, and
because of the openness, the very openness
of the process, would be, actually it's a
pretty good idea of what claims are out
there and what things are out there to
avoid having that patent invalidated.
So, there's a great deal of care
that has to be made in just how specific we
get. It's, that's why I call it, you know,
one China concern or policy.
NEW SPEAKER: It's obviously a
hard problem. The question is, is there
anything we can actually do about it? The
openness problem, the classic answer is,
all the alternative works.
NEW SPEAKER: That was William
Dickson, currently employed by Microsoft.
NEW SPEAKER: My background is IP
sec arena. And I'm not clear that 2026
revisions here proposed or maybe this is a
change in process that would be needed, but
my contribution to a requirements
discussion, would be a particular problem
to solve. And I would want to make those
kind of contributions at least to express
what the requirement is. And I would then
not be clear exactly what my burden would
be, should I file a patent application for
a particular solution that solved that in
the future.
So, in a lot of processes, we
participate in requirements discussions and
drafts up front and I'd like to participate
in that discussion, certainly. People made
make contributions, but I may also in vent
some solution to that particular problem.
But I'm worried if I participate in the
discussion requirements, that anything I in
vent perhaps, you know, would fall under
some of the standing disclosure
requirements. So that's one thing, is how
do we handle people participating in
requirements discussion who then file a
patent for that.
The second thing is the
requirement to disclose patents which have
been filed. Most of the requirements here
talk about rights. And rights don't
actually happen as far as I understand,
until the patents are issued. So as an
implementer, I'm very concerned about all
the things that are filed and it would
certainly be nice, as an implementer to
know what's been filed, as opposed to when
they finally do get awarded two or three or
5 years down the road.
NEW SPEAKER: I think there's a
lot of text that talks about claims to
right. My understanding is that you can
claim a right before it's officially
granted. But I'm not a lawyer U
NEW SPEAKER: Okay.
NEW SPEAKER: Is there any
response to the participating requirements
discussion?
NEW SPEAKER: Actually, I have a
comment on the requirements discussion. It
would seem to me that if one has a patent
in the queue, and then lines up
requirements such that is the patented
technology would be more likely to be used
as a result of that requirement, that would
seem to be somewhat out of bounds.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes, I agree. But
then there's the issue of when do you file?
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Chair, I have
a response to that as well. It's actually
as I understand it, a very hard problem,
because on the one hand, yeah, you're
hemming your own future options. At the
same time you might actually get useful
ideas in the requirements discussion. So
who knows anymore. It's complicated.
NEW SPEAKER: That's a very, very
difficult piece. The general piece of
whether it's a requirements discussion or
just initial bantering on a mailing list or
initial development of technology and
somebody watching that and running around
and filing patent applications on it. Is
extremely difficult and we don't know what
to do about it. We have some evidence that
this has happened in the past. With IETF
discussions.
And, but it's not clear what the
IETF can can can do about that per se. I'm
not sure that there is anything other than
burying people
NEW SPEAKER: George. This is
just a followup on Scott's follow up. This
is George Contreras speaking again. At the
end of the day, to file a patent, you
always do have to end up declaring who the
inventor is, at least in the U.S.. And you
know, so there's some limit to someone just
being able to scope in the background and
steel rights coming out of a discussion, a
requirements discussion. But like Scott
said, it's a problem we need to recognize.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Seeing no
other follow ups, next topic please.
NEW SPEAKER: Liz best Rodriguez,
co-chair to the ISP working group. And one
of the things we have had happen in our
organization, and I'm not sure the best way
to try and address this is companies coming
in, basically, and saying we may or may not
have technology or patents in this area,
and so now, how do you judge, we've got
guidance whether or not a certain
technolgoy, to but in your draft. Is
really something you consider. Because
basically, they say, we're not going to
search our patent portfolio, but we've
disclosed, and you know, that's it. And
the company is perfectly within their legal
rights of approaching this.
George, responding to that, I
mean, that type of non specific disclosure
wouldn't be com compliant with the rule, I
mean, the rule, the way it's worded here
and how we're proposing it, the disclosure
be specific, otherwise, every company can
say, well, we may or may not have patents
and there wouldn't be any value in
disclosure at all. The value is to allow
the working group to consider the patents
that are at issue and to think about
whether or not the technology is important
enough to be included. Whether there are
alternative implementations and without
that, you lose the value, of that
disclosure. And again, that wouldn't meet
the rule.
NEW SPEAKER: Actually, having
been through these type of disclosures, I
can say it is very argumentative, what is
in scope, out of scope, and so you know,
NEW SPEAKER: Sorry. Who are you?
NEW SPEAKER: John Tavis. When
they want may want more specificity from
the person, but frequently, it's highly
dependent on how the implementation
actually works. I've actually seen patent
situations where, the fact that it works on
a wired line network, it is not fringing on
the patent. When it works on a wireless
network, it becomes a patent issue. So
determining scope can be very problematic
and people like to have it very concrete.
But the only person to actually decide if
it is in scope or not in scope is the
implementer of the product.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. We seem to
have finally generated something with a lot
of follow ups. According to the original
schedule, we're supposed to be done with
this part of the agenda in two minutes.
We'll give it more time, because things
seem to be going okay. But try to keep it
short.
NEW SPEAKER: I'm hearing that
language is can commonly used in blanket
disclosures today is not going to be
appropriate under this proposal. What I
would really like to hear is some proposed
language for instance, one boiler plate
that might be useful to have, is one that
says, any and all technology that is
provided by this firm will be available on
a royalty free or rand basis. That can
help avoid having to make all kind of
specific disclosures when knowledge, you
know, in a big company, sometimes this
becomes so unavoid able, that with every
other posting we may need to go and make
another disclosure. And if the intent of
the company's participation is to make
clear the licensing under which any
contributions might fall, it would be
really nice to have some kind of safe
harbor there, otherwise it looks like the
cost of participation for those that do
represent IPR holders, becomes
disproportion alley great than those that
don't have large portfolios.
NEW SPEAKER: Identify yourself,
please. I know you spoke before.
NEW SPEAKER: Andy somebody.
NEW SPEAKER: And Scott rim.
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: I overlap with
Randy. It's very hard to do specific
disclosure. The disclose err himself
doesn't know lot of times. Changes occur
all the time.
The goal of all of this is for the
working group to be able to make decisions
and licensing disclosure is much more
important than specific claim disclosure.
NEW SPEAKER: This is Steve,
again, I'm the specificity of the
disclosures, we have to make it possible to
have a way to participate without having to
do a patent search or a search of patent
applications on every issue that comes up.
And I think some of the blanket
declarations that indicate willingness to
license under rand anything that the
participant contributes ought to be able to
cover those cases, without the need to do
anything, a patent search.
NEW SPEAKER: Just as a point of
clarification, there is a distinction
between what you're required to do and what
is a courtesy to do. So that there's the
look, I don't know exactly what our claims
are in this area and I'm going off and
looking at one working group and I want
them to know I'm going off to look at it.
And it's an informal statement. That's a
different issue.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. This is, I
guess a followup
NEW SPEAKER: Name please.
NEW SPEAKER: Liz best Rodriguez.
And essentially George mentioned here that
the case that I described earlier, where
someone basically Sid it may or may not
apply, doesn't satisfy the requirements.
The criteria. So is that something that's
new, or is that something that's already
been there, and what recourse does the IETF
have in such a case?
NEW SPEAKER: George, can you
answer that?
NEW SPEAKER: I'm next in line
anyway. Yes. I mean, of course, you've
got the rule in place, and yes, I mean, I
think it appears that way at the moment.
And you have these rules and everybody
wants to comply, just to be good citizens.
But one thing to bear in mind, the only
time the rule is actually tested out. the
only time there's a real harmful
consequence to somebody not complying is
when they come back and try to enforce the
IP rights after a knot having complied with
the rule.
So if you ask for the disclosures
to be as specific as possible, and you
know, someone has just made a blanket
disclosure and hasn't disclosed the
specific patent and then they come and try
to enforce those specific patents against
an implementer, under the rule, that's when
they may run into trouble, not having
complied with the rule. And then you run
into cases, actual cases that have been
brought, where companies have not been
allowed to enforce their patents. They
become valueless because they participate
in the standards process and did not comply
with the standards organization rules about
disclosures on the patents.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Essentially,
this is Elizabeth Rodriguez again. And
essentially, this is a case where this
particular scenario is actually bridging
two different standards organizations. The
first is IETF and the second is ANSI
organization. And essentially, the ruling
from the ANSI organization was that this
was perfectly legitimate, and we can cannot
require any kind of patent search. You
know, there were two patents in this
particular case that were specifically
mentioned, that may or may not apply to a
certain scenario.
And you know, it became very
thorny in trying to figure out how to
capture that into whether or not this
technology should be used.
NEW SPEAKER: Just to, on the
patent search point, this is George
speaking again. You know, again, the rule,
the way Scott has formulated it, relates to
the contributor's reasonable and personal
knowledge, and again, I just want to
reiterate, no one has asked the patent
search be made, but I think that is this is
with the ANSI position, you don't have to
make a patent search. It's just something
if it's within the contributor's job
description or they know about it
personally, that's where disclosure is, and
that's the violation, not to disclose it.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Unless
there's strong objections, I'm going to
close the Mike after the guy in the green
shirt who wants to speak.
NEW SPEAKER: John Tavis. You
made one important very big leap of faith,
which I think is actually flawed, in its
assumption, that an individual making a
discussion or contribution that may violate
the intellectual property rules of the IETF
puts his company at risk. And how much
risk does it actually put his company to
enforce later. Since corporations do not
participate in a formal fashion in the
IETF. I don't think that linkage is as
strong as you were implying.
NEW SPEAKER: Respond to that?
NEW SPEAKER: Yes. Quickly.
NEW SPEAKER: I'll respond
quickly. What can can I say. People do
work for companies. And companies are the
ones that enforce the intellectual property
rights that they own. There have been
cases where companies have not been allowed
to enforce their rights, and the F T C in
the U.S. Anyway, has, you know, made it
very clear that if you're part of a
standards process, and this may be
different, because different standards
organizations you actually represent your
company. And you sign on behalf of your
company. Some standards organization
actually have a form that you sign to
participate, to become a member. And that
binds your company. That is not the way it
is in the IETF. And all I can say is that,
the IETF is different type organization.
It's somewhat unique in the standards world
in that way. And who knows how it will
actually play out.
NEW SPEAKER: Last counter counter
counter rebuttal.
NEW SPEAKER: Only because I think
this is important. Case law that you're
referring to, I believe, was, had companies
actually sign agreements going into it.
There is no, so, so this is the Dell case,
which is the one that is commonly cited.
Dell actually was a member of the group
that was in place here. There has not
been, to my knowledge, case law of
individuals being tied back to the F T C.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Thank you.
Next question.
NEW SPEAKER: How do you view the
illegal and defamatory paragraph
interacting with disclosure of crypto
graphic technologies and discussion of
security flaws which in some jurisdictions
has been talked about being out lawd?
NEW SPEAKER: I will note that
it's, it refers to the jurisdiction of the
person making the disclosure. It's up to
you.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. By the way,
Randy Pra soon something working group
chair.
NEW SPEAKER: George responding to
that. Because I had aside bar about that
very same point. I think, you know, when
you talk about the illegal conduct, there
are two things. Obviously, porn and stuff
that everybody accepts as illegal. And
then there's the digital property right act
and this is probably where we're going with
the question. I think we did discuss this
at length. When coming up with the
paragraph. And, I think the bottom line is
that there may be laws out there that
people don't generally view as good laws,
laws that may actually not last that long
and may be overturned by Congress or other
courts. From the IETF standpoint, to
protect the IETF, they are still laws. If
the Department of Justice came to the IETF
and said, working group X Y Z is working on
security report files and they're
publishing anti circumvention technology
code that's designed to get around
particular, you know, copy protection
mechanisms, that's illegal. IETF you have
to take it down. Then the IETF would be
compelled to take it down. And the
statement in submissions document is where
the IETF can say, okay, we'll take it down.
But at least look, we're trying to be good
citizens. We did ask the contributors to
tell us if there wasn't anything illegal in
what they did.
And we relied on that. Even
though, you know, we may not be in
compliance with that law. The IETF can't
be in the position of deciding what's a
good law or bad law. Just asking that we
comply with the law.
NEW SPEAKER: Next question.
Warning, unless people strongly object.
We're going to cut this off in about 5 more
minutes, so we can finish up in the last
fifteen minutes getting back to what we
doing.
NEW SPEAKER: This is co-chair of
the something and compression group. Max
doesn't seem to be here today. I think
there was some confusion about whether he
had time on the agenda or not. But since,
I think his draft sprung up from things we
did in rock working group, maybe, I can try
to at least represent his main point.
And I think the main point is that
sometimes, we are standardizing technology
where there's a technical requirement that
the technology be unencumbereencumberd,
because we intend to roll out the
technology throughout the Internet. And we
all know that it is very hard to generate
documents where we know, or where we have a
reasonable certainty that the technology in
there is unencumbereencumberd. But still,
I think it would be useful to actually
start work, on process that is specifically
aimed at this objective. I'm not saying we
should start today. I'm just saying, we
really should see this at one additional
work item, in the IPR process.
NEW SPEAKER: Randy bush. The
previous speaker was talking about taking
down stuff because somebody allegings a D M
C A violation. I would suggest, I'm not a
lawyer, and I do not play one on the net.
But I would suggest that we not be judgees
and juries. And not remove content because
somebody allegings something, but only act
under legal advice when we actually are
faced with a court order in the appropriate
jurisdiction where the violations occur.
That one seems to have pulled Scott's
chain. Go for a Mike, Scott.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, there's a
queue in back of me at this point, Randy.
NEW SPEAKER: Talk to the lawyer.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Please,
anybody up there to agree with what Randy
just said, say that
NEW SPEAKER:
NEW SPEAKER: I was going to go
onto cars scene's cars son's comment on
making the technology unencumber.
NEW SPEAKER: Identify yourself
again please.
NEW SPEAKER: David black.
Something that might be useful as a step in
that direction, is that when claims arise
that something else owned by somebody is
involved in a standard, right now, there
is, just so one is on one's own in terms of
whether the working group does anything in
terms of trying to unscramble what's going
on with the claim. Some thought to a
processor guidance, working group chairs or
the I E S G when the sort of third party
claims arise, what is reasonable to do and
what may or may not have worked in the
past, might help. As opposed to the
current situation where this claim pops up
and you're flying blind trying to figure
out how to try to get some more knowledge
and facts about what is or is not going on
here.
NEW SPEAKER: I think part of what
you're looking at there is that the IETF
operates by the equivalent of case laws as
that goes. That maybe sets a precedent.
NEW SPEAKER: Yes. In essence,
the guidance document, it's the third item
on the charter, would be a good place to
record this equivalence of case law.
NEW SPEAKER: This is K R E again.
I think I agree with Randy. But I wanted
to point out that, there's no way that, it
doesn't make sense to require any kind of
technology, for anything that we do here,
regardless, that it's not, I'll make a
caveat in a second. Regardless of how wide
it's going to be deployed or how much
through the internet we expect some
technology to be deployed. That doesn't
mean we wouldn't prefer it, but requiring
it is silly. We can see a lot of people
here who are using encumberd technology,
including things like ether net. The
question is what we've always done in the
IETF when we're looking at this sort of
technology, can we reasonably distribute
it? Then licensed it by paying a 5 cent
license, or whatever.
NEW SPEAKER: We're close to out
of time, so this will be the last question
and then any follow ups and then we're done
with this.
NEW SPEAKER: That was a good lead
in to my comment. My name is Steve Hanna
and my comment is that, all of these
documents with respect to licensing terms
refer to reasonable and non discriminatory.
Reasonable and non discriminatory doesn't
really mean very much. What's reasonable
to one person is unreasonable to another.
And certainly if you're doing an open
source implementation, then requiring that
every user pay per byte or whatever, it is
not reasonable for you. So I think that,
there should be some guidance to working
groups, and I'd like to see some guidance
to working groups, pointing out that
reasonable and non discriminatory is not a
panacea, and that in some circumstances,
maybe most circumstances, we should reach
for a higher threshold and preferably
royalty free.
NEW SPEAKER: Follow up?
NEW SPEAKER: Scott?
NEW SPEAKER: Scott Bradner. You
mixed two things there. One is the
suggestions that the documents explicitly
say that the working group should prefer
technologies with no known IPR constraint.
We of course can't know whether there are
any. We can just say we don't know any.
And that was discussed when 2026
was proposed, when in fact I proposed that
particular text. And at the time, the, of
course, the working group which was working
on it, did not support my proposal. It was
certainly something we can redress. the re
add address.
The question of fair and non
discriminatory, we talked about this a
great deal when we did 2026. And it was
fixed, finally, a suggestion of Christian
and an IBM lawyer, who suggested that we
use a standards process. So if you look in
this, it talks about advancing documents
along the standards track as our actual
running code test to see whether something
is fair and non discriminatory.
Getting the standards body in the
business of saying one sentence, in one
sense a copy is fair, and in two senses it
isn't. It turns out to be very, very
difficult and it means a lot of subjective
value judgments and it's something that we
decided not to go to last time and I think
we should think really careful about it
this time.
NEW SPEAKER: The people in the
queue are fine but I'm closing the Mike
after.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott, I was going
to ask you.
NEW SPEAKER: Who are you?
NEW SPEAKER: William Dickson,
again. In the past discussion, are you
saying that you don't want to have even a
recommendation for the licensing terms,
licensing statement for technology?
NEW SPEAKER: Clarify, I put in a
suggestion when 2026 was being created,
that the working group you should be,
should be urged to prefer technology with
no known IPR constraints. And the working
group at the time decided to not do that,
but to leave it to the discretion of the
working group. The text in this particular
set of documents says that it's to be
assumed the working groups will normally
prefer technology with no known IPR
constraints but it doesn't tell them to do
so. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to
telling them to do so, because I proposed
it once before. But that's a discussion we
should have on the mailing list, as to
whether we should do so.
NEW SPEAKER: Then at least I
would be in favor of a recommendation on
the type of constraint, full specification
of a constraint, foreman tree to implement
technology. I've seen the case, if you
look back overall the IPR statements that
are out there, under the IPR section of the
IETF site, there are all kinds of terms.
And at least for something which is
mandatory to implement, it would be nice to
have a recommendation for, from the IETF in
general, and the kind of terms for
mandatory technology.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. The response
Mike was closed, unless you were already in
the queue. Sorry.
Okay. I think at this point, we
want to come back to discussion of the
charter and whether or not we want this to
be a working group, whether or not we agree
with the work that's currently on the
proposed charter and finish that up and
then declare victory and go home.
Was that the question?
NEW SPEAKER: First, do we want to
become a working group. Let's take a hum.
All in favor.
( Loud hum. )
Opposed.
( )
NEW SPEAKER: I think we have to
take it at a higher pitch. Rather than
( It was hard to tell which one
was louder. )
NEW SPEAKER: All right. How many
people think that we need to become a
working group, want is perhaps not the
right question in this context. Hum.
( Hum. )
Okay. How many people think that
we do not need a working group on these
topics?
( That's louder. )
NEW SPEAKER: It sounds like -- I
think we need a show of hands.
NEW SPEAKER: How about a little
discussion first.
NEW SPEAKER: What would you like
to discuss, Randy?
NEW SPEAKER: I think. I couldn't
hear.
NEW SPEAKER: Scott.
NEW SPEAKER: We obviously want
the work. That's without question. These
two drafts are well along. You know, Mr.
Bradner has done great work. But there is
a third bullet, which is guidelines context
and culture change for the working groups.
Fixes the common knowledge that is no
longer true. The question is, do we need a
working group for that? I think we can
just do the work. So, as, the point is, we
need the third document. That's not the
same as Scott just producing a couple of
drafts. And the question is, do we need a
working group for that alone?
Okay.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Andy, in what
ways would it matter that we formally go
through the process of being a working
group, versus continuing the progression of
these documents, if forming a working group
slows this down, then I'd be opposed. On
the other hand, if we're acting like a
working group, why not call ourselves a
working group. It's really, almost depends
on what you mean by working group kind of
question.
The other thing that I want to
strongly support is, not expanding the
scope too much, but on the other hand,
recognizing that what's being proposed may
significantly change the culture of the
working group, particularly if disclosure
documents are required at certain stages or
in order to proceed with their discussion
or enter a discussion room and if that is
the topic for the working group, I think
that would be a good one. And that might
be a topic for an independent working group
that's not necessarily concerned with the
progression of the two documents.
NEW SPEAKER: Randy?
NEW SPEAKER: Randy bush. I
believe these two documents can get further
if we're a working group or not. I believe
that it will take us a considerable amount
of time, measured in a year or two, to come
to a mind about what to do to progress
forward. On changing the culture
significantly. I think what's needed is a
mailing list, which we have, and calling it
a working group and having some sort of
trappings around it is a non issue.
NEW SPEAKER: I'm actually next in
the queue. Personal opinion. That the
chair hat off. The main distinction I see
between working group and not, is whether
or not we need to have a series of face to
face meetings, just a logistic matter. I'm
not convinced that we actually need face to
face meetings at every IETF until we get
the documents done.
NEW SPEAKER: Linda shore.
Actually, another us distinction is that
working group documents have to go through
working group last call. But, and this is
really a process issue. Clearly, there are
tremendous disadvantages to having
technologists discuss law.
( Applause. )
But at the same time, I think that
there's, for something like this, that
really is fundamental to our culture and
how we make our technical decisions,
transparency of process has a lot of
advantage. And if there's some way to make
sure that this is as parts torrey as
possible parts taste, and to make clear
what the culture is, because functional
change, certainly in my working group, mid
com, one thing we've seen is that, these
issues, IP R issues, not only affect the
technical decisions that we make but also
the conduct of the working group. People
behave really really badly when they're
trying to protect and promote IPR. It's
really disruptive. So if we can do
something to be more clear or explicit or
open about the cultural issues, I think
that's a tremendous advantage.
NEW SPEAKER: I don't know what
his name is. Speaking as A D of this area,
and the main difference I see between the
working group and not a working group is
that, with the working group, it's well
defined what it is, and I can point, I can
tell people where to find information about
in one sentence.
Look at the working group chart.
If there is something that's not a
working group, then I have to spend
considerable more time saying this is a
special case, and you have to figure out
which web page to look at, you have to
figure out where to look for archives and
so on. And for an effort that, I
definitely don't want to be accused of
having lacked that. And I very much like
to use process we have for being open,
instead of trying to in vent new process
for being open.
That's my reasoning.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. I think one
of the
NEW SPEAKER: Identify yourself.
NEW SPEAKER: Ted somebody. I
think one of the things that's been
implicit in a lot of the comments both
about engineers not being good as lawyers
and some of the comments about how
companies relate to this process, is that
there are in fact two things that these
drafts do. One is tell individuals how to
participate in working groups. And I think
we can do that and do that well. The other
is, explain how corporations relate to the
standards which are produced by those
working groups.
And some of the claims that we're
talking about are actually fundamental to
the culture of the IETF, as participation
of any IETF as individuals. And I think
some of what's being proposed, actually has
some subtle changes in how the corporations
relate to the standards which are produced
by the IETF.
And I'm not sure our traditional
working group mechanism is going to get the
participation of the right people too make
sure that the working group outcome
satisfies that second group of
participants. That does not mean I have a
text to send to working group chairs about
what the better process is, but I think
it's something that we need to keep in mind
as we go through this process.
NEW SPEAKER: I want to take a
slightly different, on whether or not the
work outlined in the charter needs to be
done, with or without a working group. All
who think the work needs to be done, please
hum.
( Loud hum. )
NEW SPEAKER: Those who do not.
NEW SPEAKER: Those who do not are
not here.
( It was silent. )
NEW SPEAKER: That one at least is
clear. Yes.
NEW SPEAKER: James wood young. I
have a brief comment. I heard a few people
suggest that since we're technologists and
engineers, we shouldn't really be be
discussing law. And that bothers me. And
I wanted to get up and say, no, we're
engineers, that means we shouldn't be
practicing law. Discussing law is a good
idea and we should not shy away from it.
( Applause. )
NEW SPEAKER: Let me agree and
disagree with that. Yes. We're not
lawyers and we shouldn't be practicing law.
At the same time, a lot of what we have in
2026 is the result of a lot of arm chair
lawyering that may have been less than
perfect value. Getting some really strong
legal input from a variety of corporations
that are looking at this will be really
helpful.
NEW SPEAKER: No argument.
NEW SPEAKER: Andy,
NEW SPEAKER: Just curious, in the
proposed charter, with the discussion that
we've been having about the culture change,
particularly, I think more and more we're
looking at, a potential for looking at
participation in the IETF, that's not just
individual, that's a major culture change.
Do we want that in the charter and is it
properly called out?
NEW SPEAKER: I take it you guys
are having an interesting discussion?
NEW SPEAKER: No, we're just
confused. Go ahead. I think.
NEW SPEAKER: I think we're about
out of time, so I think this is going to be
the last item.
NEW SPEAKER: Well, it's just a
response to Andy. I'm Scott somebody.
People can can act as individuals and bring
in individual contributions, and to their
knowledge, whatever that phrase was, you
know, are there intellectual property
issues with what they're bringing in, if
they say so.
NEW SPEAKER: Okay. Let me try to
sum up in the 30 seconds we've got left. I
think what we've heard is that, we've got
pretty good agreement that there's work
that needs to be done. We do not have
currently agreement on whether or not there
should be a working group. We do not have
time to resolve that now. We're going to
take it to the list. Is there anybody here
who needs us what the working group list or
BOF list or whatever list it is again?
Okay. It's IP R
Dash D E L E
( He's saying the list name. )
NEW SPEAKER: Is it possible that
we have a substantial change in hum
NEW SPEAKER: Let's take one
parting hum.
NEW SPEAKER: All in favor of the
creating the working group.
( Hum. )
Opposed?
NEW SPEAKER:
( One person hummed. )
NEW SPEAKER: I think that's
clearer hum. I did get one suggestions
that who is summ humming in the best
harmony. We'll proceed formally with the
working group. And see you on the mailing
list and see you in Atlanta, but it won't
be Friday morning, because we're not
meeting Friday in Atlanta.
NEW SPEAKER: Did you think this
was a worthwhile meeting?
Yes, it does. I don't know
either. But we will find out.
Thank you very much, and good to
see you.