Re: [antitrust-policy] Should the IETF allow discussion of licensing costs

[Thomas Narten <[e-mail]>]

IANAL. That said...

> 1.  Should disclosure of licensing terms be *allowed*?

Yes. Statements of facts should never be disallowed.

> 2.  Should disclosure of licensing terms be *required*?

I suspect such a requirement would be completely unworkable and
useless in practice. Can't license terms vary from one agreement to
another?  Aren't they often entangled in multiple patents and various
business things? Aren't those agreements typically private between the
parties involved?

Moreover, if the licensing terms differ for the same IPR at various
times (and for different parties), how on earth can an IETF engineer
make sense out of it all?

What I think the IETF participants need to be able to say is "the
licensing terms are a problem for me" (without getting into details).
... "therefore I am opposed to ..." or something like that.

That is what we (in theory) do with documents moving up the standards
track that have IPR in them. AFAIK, that hasn't been
unworkable. (True, it may never have come up, but if licensing *had*
been an issue with a particular technology, I expect the issue would
have been raised.)

> 3.  If you said yes to either 1 or 2, should *discussion *of those
> licensing costs be allowed?

Disallowed? That may be going too far. Should we do so? Probably not,
in the *vast* majority of cases. What reasonable discussion could be
had, and what concrete actions could come out of such a discussion?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Thomas