Re: Proposed IESG Statement on IPR Declarations

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Friday, July 08, 2016 11:34 -0400 Barry Leiba
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> The statement below seems to amount to "The IESG has nothing
> to do with IPR disclosures," and nothing more.  I don't
> understand why the IESG wants to put that out as an IESG
> Statement, rather than, say, posting it prominently on the IPR
> disclosure pages (where people who need to see it might
> actually see it), and making sure that it also covers the IAB,
> and maybe the IAOC, ISOC, and the IETF Secretariat.

+1... and three additional options.

(1) The statement seems to be just a reprise of the Note Well
from a different point of view.  As is pointed out every time
there is an effort to tune the Note Well, there is significant
danger of people taking the statement as a sufficient summary of
what the BCP(s) actually say.  More than one such statement
makes that even worse, so please don't do this.  If the IESG
thinks that more is needed, tune the Note Well.

(2) While "the IESG has nothing to do with..." (which I also
interpret from the note) would mostly have been true at one
time, RFC 6701 explicitly puts WG Chairs and the IESG into the
enforcement business.  If this statement is to be issued in any
form, 6701 should be updated and replaced to identify that
additional way of notifying the community.

(3) When I heard that the IESG was planning an additional
statement in this area, I assumed it would address the one
recent claimed development that seemed to be a loose end --
whether someone who is listed as both an inventor and a
co-author on a document can possibly claim to not have
reasonably have personal knowledge of a possible or perceived
interaction between the two.   I think current version of BCP 79
might actually be a tad weak there: such inventors not
disclosing because of (unpublished) hair-splitting that might
make the invention inapplicable is not in the community's
interest.  I think the intent of BCP 79 is (or should be) that
they disclose and, if appropriate, disclose why they don't think
there is an interaction.    Anything else just feels a little
sleazy and does not benefit either the IETF processes or the
inventor -- especially given the risk that the inventor's
company will later come along and try to enforce the patent
against users of the IETF's spec, disclosing only after others
build products or when the enforcement action is started.  I
think BCP 79 allows enough latitude for a formal interpretation
along those lines.  But this statement is completely silent on
the matter.

  best,
    john