IPR disclosure bug and IESG response

[IETF Executive Director <[e-mail]>]

In June 2023, the IESG was alerted [1] to a bug in the IPR disclosure system that has been present since 2014, which meant that IPR disclosures were not linked to a specific Internet-Draft (I-D) version, as required by the relevant RFCs [2].

Going forward, this bug will be fixed so that any IPR disclosure must specify the I-D version. 

The IESG has discussed in depth, with the assistance of counsel and the Tools Team, what to do with the ~3,500 IPR disclosures that were posted while this bug existed.  It has concluded that the only time where the relevant version can be accurately deduced is when there was only a -00 version of the I-D at the time of the disclosure, because for all other disclosures, the intended I-D version may have been a previous version.   

The IESG also considered if a standard warning message could be applied to all of these disclosures but there are too many different circumstances that such a warning would need to account for.

The IESG has therefore asked the Tools Team to add relevant on-screen notices that warn readers about the applicability of these IPR disclosures along with a recommendation on who to contact if they have any questions about which version the disclosure applies to.  There will be multiple versions of this notice, depending on multiple factors including who made the disclosure and what versions existed when it was made.

The changes to the IPR disclosure system are scheduled to be deployed within a week.

Please send any feedback or questions to the IESG at [e-mail]

[1]  https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ipr-wg/h2VHiw8slrZsoUvEtdGzuX98kgw/
[2]  RFC 3668 (from February 2004), RFC 4879 (from March 2005), RFC 8179 (from March 2017).

-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[e-mail]