Re: [admin-discuss] Proposal to cease accepting IPR disclosures by unstructured email

Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 09:27:11AM +1300, IETF Executive Director:
> The IETF Administration LLC is proposing to cease accepting IPR disclosures by unstructured email and making the existing mechanism of a structured form the sole mechanism for submitting IPR disclosures.  We are now seeking feedback on this proposal.
> 
> IPR disclosures can currently be submitted by one of three Datatracker forms [1] [2] [3] or by email.  The forms are highly structured and the IPR disclosures are stored in a database that can be both browsed [4] and searched [5] using this structure,  
> 
> Email submissions, provided for historical compatibility, often require significant backend processing and judgement calls from the Secretariat on what data should be extracted from the email for each field in the database.  The volumes are small, generally only one or two a month, but on occasion they are tens of pages long with multiple disclosures extracted.  Notwithstanding the low volumes, it is our view that it is inappropriate to ask the Secretariat to decide what content to include/exclude and how to represent it, for such a legally sensitive area and that we should not be processing of IPR disclosures in this way.  Consequently, we propose to cease accepting IPR disclosure by email.  
> 
> If you have any feedback on this proposal, please send it directly to me or to the admin-discuss list before Friday 8th January 2021.

I think this is a good idea.  I do not have negative comment on this
proposal, but on IPR in general.  I am of the opinion that IPR should be
required BEFORE a draft can be considered for adoption and allowed at no
time afterward.  If IPR arises after adoption, the draft should
automatically return to an adoption call - but much better to simply not
allow it.

I think that WGs should have the opportunity to consider restrictions
of IPR before they spend any time on a draft.  I have no interest in
improving a work that has unclear or restrictive IPR - not knowing about
IPR until after adoption or even later amounts to free consulting.  It
is not unreasonable to require a company to figure-out their IPR beforehand.

I have seen a few IPR that are open, but whose current and/or future
restrictions are unclear.

> Any IPR disclosures received by email from now on will not be processed until a final decision is made on this proposal.  Submitters will be notified of that so that they can submit by a form if they choose.
> 
> [1]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/new-specific/
> [2]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/new-generic/
> [3]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/new-third-party/
> [4]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/
> [5]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/search/
> 
> -- 
> Jay Daley
> IETF Executive Director
> exec-director@ietf.org
> 
> 
> 
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