IPP Mail Archive: RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts

RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts

From: don@lexmark.com
Date: Mon Jul 12 2004 - 11:59:56 EDT

  • Next message: Harry Lewis: "RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts"

    Ira:

    The IEEE's policy is one of assurance rather than disclosure. Disclosure
    is informally encouraged.

    The W3C; however, does have a policy mandating disclosure. It does
    carefully walk this line by stating in clause 6.7:

    "Disclosure of third party patents is only required where the Advisory
    Committee Representative or Working Group participant has been made aware
    that the third party patent holder or applicant has asserted that its
    patent contains Essential Claims, unless such disclosure would breach a
    pre-existing nondisclosure obligation."

    It is important to realize that in RFC3668, from which clause 6.1.3 it
    says:

    "If a person has information about IPR that may Cover IETF Contributions,
    but the participant is not required to disclose because they do not meet
    the criteria in Section 6.6 (e.g., the IPR is owned by some other company),
    such person is encouraged to notify the IETF by sending an email message to
    ietf-ipr@ietf.org. Such a notice should be sent as soon as reasonably
    possible after the person realizes the connection."

    Notice the use of the word "may" in the first sentence. If you have even
    the faintest idea that a patent might be on material in an I-D you should
    disclose the existence of the patent but I don't read that section to mean
    that you are claiming its applicability. Also notice that disclosure of
    the IPR of others is encouraged and not required.

    The statement mandated to be included is actually extracted from RFC3667,
    clause 5.1. Since it states "in accordance with RFC3668" and since RFC3668
    only encourages the disclosure of IPR belonging to others I'm not sure what
    the hang up is. There seems to be enough weasel words here that unless you
    intentionally obfuscating the patents on your submission you'd be OK
    especially if they are owned by someone else and for whom you are not an
    agent or employee.

    BTW: I am not a lawyer.

    **********************************************
     Don Wright don@lexmark.com

     Chair, IEEE SA Standards Board
     Member, IEEE-ISTO Board of Directors
     f.wright@ieee.org / f.wright@computer.org

     Director, Alliances & Standards
     Lexmark International
     740 New Circle Rd
     Lexington, Ky 40550
     859-825-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax)
    **********************************************

    |---------+---------------------------->
    | | "McDonald, Ira" |
    | | <imcdonald@sharpl|
    | | abs.com> |
    | | |
    | | 07/12/2004 11:09 |
    | | AM |
    | | |
    |---------+---------------------------->
    >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
      | |
      | To: "'don@lexmark.com'" <don@lexmark.com>, "McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald@sharplabs.com> |
      | cc: "'carl@manros.com'" <carl@manros.com>, "McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald@sharplabs.com>, "Ipp@Pwg. Org" |
      | <ipp@pwg.org>, owner-ipp@pwg.org |
      | Subject: RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts |
    >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

    Hi Don,

    Disclosing someone else's patent worries me.

    Disclosing that _in the judgment of that someone else_ this
    patent has applicability to this spec is legally very dangerous.
    Patent holders are typically very touchy about the timing of
    making such judgments public.

    Making document authors certify that they are not aware
    of any relevant patent (belonging to other parties) is
    _not_ consistent with the IPR policies of W3C or IEEE
    (as far as I know).

    Cheers,
    - Ira

    Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
    Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
    PO Box 221 Grand Marais, MI 49839
    phone: +1-906-494-2434
    email: imcdonald@sharplabs.com

    -----Original Message-----
    From: don@lexmark.com [mailto:don@lexmark.com]
    Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 8:09 AM
    To: McDonald, Ira
    Cc: 'carl@manros.com'; McDonald, Ira; Ipp@Pwg. Org; owner-ipp@pwg.org
    Subject: RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts

    Ira:

    Yes you would be required to disclose the patent held by someone else that
    you were told about; however, it is not your responsibility to assess
    whether the patent is applicable. Today, virtually all standards
    organization's patent policies (IEEE, W3C, ISO, etc.) either encourage or
    mandate the submitter to disclose any patents which might be applicable to
    the submission whether held by you, your employer or someone else IF you
    actually know about it.

     I don't understand the problem. Why should you worry about disclosing
    someone else's patent... it's public information anyway.

    **********************************************
     Don Wright don@lexmark.com

     Chair, IEEE SA Standards Board
     Member, IEEE-ISTO Board of Directors
     f.wright@ieee.org / f.wright@computer.org

     Director, Alliances & Standards
     Lexmark International
     740 New Circle Rd
     Lexington, Ky 40550
     859-825-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax)
    **********************************************

    |---------+---------------------------->
    | | "McDonald, Ira" |
    | | <imcdonald@sharpl|
    | | abs.com> |
    | | |
    | | 07/11/2004 03:10 |
    | | PM |
    | | |
    |---------+---------------------------->

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    |
      | To: "'don@lexmark.com'" <don@lexmark.com>, "McDonald, Ira"
    <imcdonald@sharplabs.com> |
      | cc: "'carl@manros.com'" <carl@manros.com>, "Ipp@Pwg. Org"
    <ipp@pwg.org>, owner-ipp@pwg.org |
      | Subject: RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts
    |

    >---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --------------------------------------------|

    Hi Don,

    My very point: "or someone has told you about it". The reference
    to RFC 3668 has no protection benefits at all. In law, the
    direct text is everything.

    If a collaborator on a public standard (from another vendor)
    tells me out of courtesy about a probably applicable patent
    (only lawyers really know about applicability), then this
    I-D boilerplate requires _me_ to disclose _their_ patent.

    Not even close to acceptable.

    Cheers,
    - Ira

    Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
    Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
    PO Box 221 Grand Marais, MI 49839
    phone: +1-906-494-2434
    email: imcdonald@sharplabs.com

    -----Original Message-----
    From: don@lexmark.com [mailto:don@lexmark.com]
    Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 2:16 PM
    To: McDonald, Ira
    Cc: 'carl@manros.com'; Ipp@Pwg. Org; owner-ipp@pwg.org
    Subject: RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts

    It seems to me saying "of which I am aware" and then "in accordance with
    RFC 3668" in the I-D would explicitly qualify awareness to be "reasonably
    and personally known to the submitter."

    If you don't know about it then it can't be held against you. How could
    you reasonably and personally be aware of a patent held by someone else
    unless you spend your days trolling the various countries patent databases
    or someone has told you about it?

    *******************************************
    Don Wright don@lexmark.com

    Chair, IEEE SA Standards Board
    Member, IEEE-ISTO Board of Directors
    f.wright@ieee.org / f.wright@computer.org

    Director, Alliances and Standards
    Lexmark International
    740 New Circle Rd C14/082-3
    Lexington, Ky 40550
    859-825-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax)
    *******************************************

    "McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald@sharplabs.com>
    Sent by: owner-ipp@pwg.org
    07/10/2004 12:57 PM

            To: "'carl@manros.com'" <carl@manros.com>, "Ipp@Pwg. Org"
    <ipp@pwg.org>
            cc:
            Subject: RE: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts

    Hi,

    Harald Alvestrand replied to Carl-Uno Manros (see below):

      We do - which is why the phrase "reasonably and personally known to
      the submitter" in RFC 3667 / 3668 is so important.

    But "reasonably and personally" is NOT part of the IPR statement
    required at the beginning of every submitted I-D (without which
    the I-D Editor will no longer publish any I-D).

    Here's the relevant verbatim quote from "1id-guidelines.txt":

      All Internet-Drafts must begin with the following intellectual
      property rights (IPR) statement:

      "By submitting this Internet-Draft, I certify that any applicable
      patent or other IPR claims of which I am aware have been disclosed, or
      will be disclosed, and any of which I become aware will be disclosed,
      in accordance with RFC 3668."

    Personally, I'm not writing any more I-Ds. Because there's not any
    limitation in this IPR boilerplate about patents or IPR of _other_
    parties that the editor may be or become aware of.

    Cheers,
    - Ira

    Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
    Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
    PO Box 221 Grand Marais, MI 49839
    phone: +1-906-494-2434
    email: imcdonald@sharplabs.com

    -----Original Message-----
    From: owner-ipp@pwg.org [mailto:owner-ipp@pwg.org]On Behalf Of
    carl@manros.com
    Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2004 3:22 AM
    To: Ipp@Pwg. Org
    Subject: IPP> FW: Copyright statements in drafts

    All,

    Regarding some of the new required text in Internet Drafts.

    This has been discussed for a while on the IETF Chairs list.

    I raised a similar qustion to the one brougth up by Ira.

    See my question and the official answer from the IETF Chair Harald
    Alvestrand below.

    Carl-Uno

    Carl-Uno Manros
    700 Carnegie Street #3724
    Henderson, NV 89052, USA
    Tel +1-702-617-9414
    Fax +1-702-617-9417
    Mob +1-702-525-0727
    Email carl@manros.com
    Web www.manros.com

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand [mailto:harald@alvestrand.no]
    Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2004 10:02 AM
    To: carl@manros.com; wgchairs@ietf.org
    Subject: RE: Copyright statements in drafts

    --On 3. juni 2004 15:49 -0700 carl@manros.com wrote:

    > Hi,
    >
    > I am not sure whether I missed this in the discussion, but I can see
    some
    > problems with Copyright statements in early drafts. There may well be
    > people or organizations which already hold patents or copyrights for
    > things that find their way into I-Ds. If they are not actively involved
    > in that particular WG, they may not discover any infringements until the
    > RFC is in IETF wide Last Call. Hopefully we provide for Copyright
    > objections at that stage, even if there has been umpteen earlier I-Ds on
    > the subject.

    We do - which is why the phrase "reasonably and personally known to the
    submitter" in RFC 3667 / 3668 is so important.

                       Harald



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