Re: ipr-wg was Proposal to cease accepting IPR disclosures by unstructured email

[Alexandre Petrescu <[e-mail]>]

Ideally, I would need to have access to all private declarations of IPR 
_absence_, not their presence.

I understand that all RFC authors are demanded during the last phases 
prior to RFC issuance to state what they know about IPR.

In the instances of RFCs where I was an author, all replies from 
authors, including myself, were such declarations of absence of IPR.

These statements are however not captured on 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/

As such, when this URL says "The IETF Datatracker maintains a list of 
IPR disclosures made to the IETF." - could be improved.

Because not all IPR disclosures made to the IETF are there (e.g. the 
declarations of absence of IPR are not there).

Alex

Le 23/12/2020 à 18:07, tom petch a écrit :
> 
> 
> On 22/12/2020 19:44, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> John,
>>
>> IMHO your point is clearly out of scope for the admin list since it 
>> raises an IETF process issue. So I've have bcc'ed the admin list and, 
>> since we don't have an ipr-discuss list, added the IETF list. You said:
> 
> 
> We used  to, the ipr-wg, and the website tells you how to subscribe to 
> the mailng list although as the last archive entry is 2014 there would 
> likely not be much traffic but if like me you never get reminders and 
> never get around to unsubscribing there could still be interested 
> parties on it.
> 
> Tom Petch
> 
>>> If IPR arises after adoption, the draft should
>>> automatically return to an adoption call - but much better to simply not
>>> allow it.
>>
>> Firstly, an adoption call is not a formal or required part of the IETF 
>> process, it is simply a pragmatic step that some WGs use (see 
>> RFC7221). So we can't have a requirement to repeat a step that isn't 
>> required in the first place.
>>
>> Secondly, we have no power to "disallow" late IPR disclosures. 
>> Sometimes people only discover patents late, and do us a favour by 
>> notifying them. That particularly applies to third party disclosures, 
>> or patents elsewhere in a large company**. Sometimes people are 
>> legally or contractually unable to make disclosures until their 
>> employer decides to publish an application. I'm sure there are other 
>> cases too, such as when an IETF Last Call triggers a disclosure by 
>> somebody who has been unaware of the draft until then. We may not like 
>> it, but there will always be late disclosures.
>>
>> Therefore we just have to deal with them when they arrive.
>>
>> Regards
>>     Brian Carpenter
>>
>> ** Note that our rules do not require a patent search. From RFC8179:
>>
>>>>     m. "Reasonably and personally known": something an individual knows
>>>>        personally or, because of the job the individual holds, would
>>>>        reasonably be expected to know.  This wording is used to 
>>>> indicate
>>>>        that an organization cannot purposely keep an individual in the
>>>>        dark about patents or patent applications just to avoid the
>>>>        disclosure requirement.  But this requirement should not be
>>>>        interpreted as requiring the IETF Contributor or Participant (or
>>>>        his or her represented organization, if any) to perform a patent
>>>>        search to find applicable IPR.
>>
>> On 23-Dec-20 07:11, john heasley wrote:
>>> Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 09:27:11AM +1300, IETF Executive Director:
>>>> The IETF Administration LLC is proposing to cease accepting IPR 
>>>> disclosures by unstructured email and making the existing mechanism 
>>>> of a structured form the sole mechanism for submitting IPR 
>>>> disclosures.  We are now seeking feedback on this proposal.
>>>>
>>>> IPR disclosures can currently be submitted by one of three 
>>>> Datatracker forms [1] [2] [3] or by email.  The forms are highly 
>>>> structured and the IPR disclosures are stored in a database that can 
>>>> be both browsed [4] and searched [5] using this structure,
>>>>
>>>> Email submissions, provided for historical compatibility, often 
>>>> require significant backend processing and judgement calls from the 
>>>> Secretariat on what data should be extracted from the email for each 
>>>> field in the database.  The volumes are small, generally only one or 
>>>> two a month, but on occasion they are tens of pages long with 
>>>> multiple disclosures extracted.  Notwithstanding the low volumes, it 
>>>> is our view that it is inappropriate to ask the Secretariat to 
>>>> decide what content to include/exclude and how to represent it, for 
>>>> such a legally sensitive area and that we should not be processing 
>>>> of IPR disclosures in this way.  Consequently, we propose to cease 
>>>> accepting IPR disclosure by email.
>>>>
>>>> If you have any feedback on this proposal, please send it directly 
>>>> to me or to the admin-discuss list before Friday 8th January 2021.
>>>
>>> I think this is a good idea.  I do not have negative comment on this
>>> proposal, but on IPR in general.  I am of the opinion that IPR should be
>>> required BEFORE a draft can be considered for adoption and allowed at no
>>> time afterward.  If IPR arises after adoption, the draft should
>>> automatically return to an adoption call - but much better to simply not
>>> allow it.
>>>
>>> I think that WGs should have the opportunity to consider restrictions
>>> of IPR before they spend any time on a draft.  I have no interest in
>>> improving a work that has unclear or restrictive IPR - not knowing about
>>> IPR until after adoption or even later amounts to free consulting.  It
>>> is not unreasonable to require a company to figure-out their IPR 
>>> beforehand.
>>>
>>> I have seen a few IPR that are open, but whose current and/or future
>>> restrictions are unclear.
>>>
>>>> Any IPR disclosures received by email from now on will not be 
>>>> processed until a final decision is made on this proposal.  
>>>> Submitters will be notified of that so that they can submit by a 
>>>> form if they choose.
>>>>
>>>> [1]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/new-specific/
>>>> [2]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/new-generic/
>>>> [3]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/new-third-party/
>>>> [4]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/
>>>> [5]  https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/search/
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Jay Daley
>>>> IETF Executive Director
>>>> [e-mail]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> IETF-Announce mailing list
>>>> [e-mail]
>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
>>>
>>
>> .
>>
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