Re: vrrp and IPR

[Alex Zinin <zinin@psg.com>]

Harald, et al

Wednesday, October 29, 2003, 6:11:10 PM, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> OK, I'll mark a DISCUSS on that basis. Ouch.

I talked to Scott today. In short, he believes the IESG should not
require explicit statements about patent licensing for VRRP.
Here's the reasoning:

 1. Section 4.1 of draft-ietf-ipr-technology-rights-12.txt approved
    today clarifies (makes it explicit) that the IESG will not
    solicit licensing info by default:

     The IESG will not make any explicit determination that the assurance
     of reasonable and non-discriminatory terms or any other terms for the
     use of an Implementing Technology has been fulfilled in practice.  It
     will instead apply the normal requirements for the advancement of
     Internet Standards.  If the two unrelated implementations of the
     specification that are required to advance from Proposed Standard to
     Draft Standard have been produced by different organizations or
     individuals, or if the "significant implementation and successful
     operational experience" required to advance from Draft Standard to
     Standard has been achieved, the IESG will presume that the terms are
     reasonable and to some degree non-discriminatory.  (See RFC 2026
     Section 4.1.3.) Note that this also applies to the case where
     multiple implementers have concluded that no licensing is required.
     This presumption may be challenged at any time, including during the
     Last-Call period by sending email to the IESG.

 2. What happened during the telechat today is we were discussing
    challenging the presumption, and the IESG needs to decide whether
    the presumption still holds or not based on the experience the protocol
    implementers have with the patent holder.
     
 3. The situation with the VRRP case can be briefly described as
    follows:

      a) the latest IPR statement from the patent holder is available at--
          http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/cisco-ipr-draft-ietf-vrrp-spec-v2.txt
         --and complies to the RND terms.

      b) in the only case known to Scott, where the patent holder used
         the patent, it used it defensively (the Alcatel case)

         /* A.Z. on the other hand, the Huawei case could be
            considered an example of an offensive use */

      c) there are multiple (a lot) of implementations of VRRP

      d) many (if not all) of them did not conclude that licensing
         was required

    Based on the above, he believes the presumption still stands.

An important thing here is that we have a lot (clearly more than two
required by the process) of implementations and the vast majority of
them did not acquire the license (can't say all, of course). For us
'did not conclude licensing was required' is the same as 'licensed
under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms'. So, it seems to me
that we should not request the licensing statements in the report, and
"instead apply the normal requirements for the advancement of Internet
Standards"

Thoughts?

Alex