RE: References to Redphone's "patent"

+1 

That is a legal quagmire that the IETF (like all good standards
development groups) must avoid.

Regards, 
Chuck 
------------- 
Chuck Powers, 
Motorola, Inc 
phone: 512-427-7261
mobile: 512-576-0008

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-bounces@ietf.org] On 
> Behalf Of Thomas Narten
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 2:31 PM
> To: Noel Chiappa
> Cc: ietf@ietf.org
> Subject: Re: References to Redphone's "patent"
> 
> jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) writes:
> 
> >     > From: "Lawrence Rosen" <lrosen@rosenlaw.com>
> 
> >     > 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
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