Re: Proposed Update to Note Well

[Stephan Wenger <[e-mail]>]

On 6.22.2012 07:14 , "Peter Saint-Andre" <[e-mail]> wrote:



   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.


s/made by you or your employer/controlled by you or your employer/

And I would remove "on your behalf", as it a) adds to the word count, and
b) could be viewed as a requirement to fill in the section III of the
disclosure form--something that is neither common practice nor, IMO, overly
useful.

Stephan

>On 6/21/12 9:50 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>     > From: Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>
>> 
>>     > 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/
>
>
>
>
>