Re: [Cfrg] I-D Action:draft-kiyomoto-kcipher2-02.txt

Hi Wook,

On Apr 22, 2011, at 5:41 AM, Wook Shin wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Now I am revising the draft reflecting the comments that I got from
> Joachim, Jim and Uri. (Thank you for the precious comments!)
> I think I would be able to have the next version of the draft on
> Tuesday next week.
>
> I have a question regarding the copyright issue though. By the IETF
> policy, is there a way of giving rights only to non-commercial uses?
> My company is preparing the IPR disclosure and just want to know
> what kind of options they could have.

right to what, exactly?  If you mean rights to "code components", that  
is, snippets of source code that appear in the draft, then the answer  
is yes, if you choose a license statement for the draft that forbids  
derivative works.  From the Trust Legal Provisions, http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info/ 
, "unless one of the legends contained in Section 6.c.i or 6.c.ii is  
included in an IETF Document containing Code Components, such Code  
Components are also licensed to each person who wishes to receive such  
a license on the terms of the “Simplified BSD License", as described  
below."  Section 6.c.i says : "If a Contributor chooses to limit the  
right to make modifications and derivative works of an IETF  
Contribution, then one of the notices in clause (i) or (ii) below must  
be included. Note that an IETF Contribution with such a notice cannot  
become a Standards Track document or, in most cases, a working group  
document."  But note that the current draft includes the statement  
"Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified  
BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal  
Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the  
Simplified BSD License", so that code components in that draft can be  
used under those terms.

If by rights you mean IPR, that is, the right to use a patent, there  
are many options open to your company.  See http://www.ietf.org/ipr/  
for the details and examples of IPR statements made by other  
companies.  Please also note that, if you are aware of patents that  
are essential to the implementation of the draft, you have an  
obligation to the IETF to disclose them.

The above is the IETF policy.  I would like to add a personal note: I  
encourage your employer to consider an IPR statement that allows for  
royalty-free use, and which does not require every implementer to have  
to hire a lawyer, which would be the case if the IPR statement  
requires that some legal paperwork needs to be done.  Here is an  
example of a royalty-free, lawyer-free IPR statement, chosen at  
random: https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/752/.  Experience has shown  
that crypto algorithms that require royalties from implementers see  
very low adoption, and are typically rejected by working groups that  
are developing standards.  Even a royalty-free license that requires  
some legal paperwork inhibits adoption, especially in open source  
projects.

David

>
> Best regards,
>
> Wook
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