[antitrust-policy] Key takeaways from genarea session at IETF 118

[Jay Daley <[e-mail]>]

The genarea session at IETF 118 had a discussion on draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust with slides [1]

The two key takeaways from the session were:

1.  There was a proposal under "4.2 Topics Requiring Caution" to replace

"Using detailed market data to evaluate the relative implementation costs of two technical alternatives to decide whether one is significantly more feasible in the market and thus a better candidate for standardization."

with 

"Using unpublished market data to evaluate the relative implementation costs of alternative technical proposals to decide …"

This change appeared to have agreement, but it became clear that there is no clear common understanding of what is meant by "market data" and a number of questions along the lines "does it include X?", and to a lesser degree what is meant by "unpublished".  One person in particular asked if it was a term of art in competition law and so we are consulting on lawyers about that.  It is likely some additional text is required to help explain this term.

2.  There was another proposal under "4.2 Topics Requiring Caution" to replace

"Entering into group negotiations of IPR terms."

with 

"Entering into private or potentially discriminatory, group negotiations of IPR terms."

After discussion, general agreement appeared to be reached that rather than "private or potentially discriminatory", the emphasis should be on avoiding group negotiations of IPR within parts of the IETF process that are not fully open and transparent, such as within the iESG or in Design Teams. New text is still needed to capture that.

Jay


[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/118/materials/slides-118-genarea-draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[e-mail]