IPR advice to avoid ignorant flame wars about patents

Thomas Narten wrote:
> 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 mean this in a polite way, but bull....! IPR consultation is mostly about
the facts, the evidence, knowledge of the law, and understanding the role of
intellectual property in technology products and services.

Risk analysis is what businesses do every day, and all parts of those
businesses--including the engineers and the lawyers--should contribute to
that analysis.

> In such cases,
> there is precious little an advisory board could tell us, other than
> "we don't know"...

Apparently there is precious little an advisory board could tell you since
your company has a very large and very talented IPR advisory group in its
legal department, but that's no excuse for IETF not to have one for the rest
of the community.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243
Skype: LawrenceRosen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
> Thomas Narten
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 12:31 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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