Re: References to Redphone's "patent"

[Thomas Narten <[e-mail]>]

[e-mail] (Noel Chiappa) writes:

>     > From: "Lawrence Rosen" <[e-mail]>

>     > the previous IPR WG .. refused even to discuss a patent policy for IETF.

> I thought the IETF sort of had one, though (see RFC mumble)?

> I definitely agree that the IETF could use some sort of permanent
> legal IPR consulting board that WG's could go to and say 'we have
> this IPR filing, what does it mean, and what is the likely impact on
> our work'.

Please don't go there.

IPR consultation is all about risk analysis. And risk to the IETF
vs. risk to me personally vs. risk to my employer vs. risk to somebody
else's employer, etc. All are VERY different things.

I don't see an IPR consulting board as being helpful at all. It will
still come down to someone else trying to tell *me* (or you) that I
(or you) shouldn't worry about something, yet it might well be *my*
(or your) skin if things go awry.

The IETF absolutely and fundamentally needs stay out of evaluating the
merits of potential IPR and what the associated risks are. This is
fundamentally an individual decision that every implementor needs to
make on their own.

This principle has been a bedrock of the IETF's IPR policy for a very
long time, and for good reason.

Oh, and another important point, even when we have IPR disclosures,
they are often for patent applications, which are not public, nor have
they been issued (so they are only potential patents). In such cases,
there is precious little an advisory board could tell us, other than
"we don't know"...

Thomas