Re: Proposed Update to Note Well

Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> Fri, 22 June 2012 14:36 UTC

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Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 08:14:09 -0600
From: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>
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To: Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Proposed Update to Note Well
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On 6/21/12 9:50 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>
> 
>     > With all due respect, that sentence could be improved.
> 
> Agree with others; splitting it up into two simpler sentences is an
> improvement.
> 
> A tweak, though (you lost something in the second sentence):
> 
>    Anything that you write, say, or discuss in the IETF, formally or informally,
>    either at an IETF meeting, or in another IETF venue, such as a mailing
>    list, is an IETF contribution. If any contribution of yours is covered by
>    a patent or patent application made by you or your employer, you or they
>    must disclose that.
> 
> The original allowed the employer to make the disclosure (since, after all,
> the employee may not know of all patent filings), and also had a positive
> requirement to make such a disclosure; this revised one brings all that back.

At the risk of starting a long thread about "we all contribute as
individuals", I'll note that traditionally the IPR rules have applied to
real people, not corporations. It's not the employee's responsibility to
know of all patent filings, and our IPR rules don't make that
assumption; we say only that if you have such knowledge and you make a
contribution that is based on such knowledge, you need to disclose the
IPR. If you don't want to disclose, you don't need to make a
contribution. I suppose it is fine to say "you or they need to disclose
it", but leaving it up to the faceless "they" might give individuals the
idea that this is all about corporations and not about each of us as
individual participants at the IETF. And somehow we also lost the point
about "you know" or "you believe" along the way. Thus I'd be more
happier with something like this:

   Anything that you write, say, or discuss in the IETF, formally or
   informally, either at an IETF meeting or in another IETF venue
   such as a mailing list, is an IETF contribution.  If you believe that
   any contribution of yours is covered by a patent or patent
   application made by you or your employer, you must disclose
   that fact or arrange for your employer to disclose it on your behalf.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/