Re: Applying "Note Well" to side meetings

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

Actually, Phill, you may well be referring to something earlier,
but the case that raised (or created) awareness of the problem
in the US and several SDOs who had not been paying enough
attention before was ASME vs. Hydrolevel case that started in
1971 and cumulated in a US Supreme Court Decision in 1982. But
the problem (which is actually at least two separate potential
problems, see below) was known, and discussed in ANSI and
ANDI-accredited SDOs, long before that.  I would be surprised if
there were not similar discussions in ISO and assorted other
national standards bodies, but I was not aware of them.  

The ASME case was special for another reason, because is was
less about IPR but about conflicts of interest in interpretation
of a standard and violations of antitrust laws.   As Scott has
heard me say too many times and for too long, I've always been
concerned that the IETF's policies concentrate almost
exclusively on patent issues and disclosure and largely ignore
issues that could be construed as attempts it interfere with
competition or violation associated laws and regulations in
relevant countries.  In a way, those other issues should be even
more important to the IETF.  As you point out, in many cases
when a standards body is used to reinforce or give some
advantage to a particular patent, the patent gets invalidated
(probably not enough cases, but many) hurting the patent
claimant and everyone trying to use the IPR.    But taking
actions that can be interpreted as conspiracies to restrain
trade put the IETF in jeopardy.  Much of the standards community
was surprised that the courts allowed ASME to continue as a
standards developer because the outcome could possibly even have
shut them down as a professional society.  

In that context, while I have no concerns about the personal
integrity and ethics of any of the people involved, we now
apparently have two separate Areas with more than one AD from
the same company.  The optics are nonetheless terrible.  If
someone wanted to devote time to developing an explicit code of
ethics for such situations, it would probably help both the IETF
and the individuals by being able to show, if questions arose,
that there were explicit rules, that they were reasonable, and
that they had been followed.

best,
   john


--On Sunday, 21 July, 2019 08:36 -0400 Phillip Hallam-Baker
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> It is worth remembering that the original concern arose out of
> an episode many decades ago when a patent holder sent people
> to a standards meeting to insert a requirement to make use of
> technology they had an undeclared interest in.