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

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Alan,

On 19-Jul-22 01:07, Alan Clark wrote:

<big snip of the part of your message that I strongly agree with>
> 
> IMHO it would be ideal to make participation in IETF conditional upon
> early disclosure 

As others have said, our rules demand that but we also allow open
participation *of any individual natural persons*. Companies do not
participate in the IETF.

> and/or blanket reciprocity. 

We intentionally have no rule about what licenses are or are not
acceptable. I personally don't like to see a RAND license being
offered without a reciprocity clause, but it's a case-by-case decision
whether there is rough consensus on a draft, taking any IPR
disclosures into account.

> This means that if a
> company failed to make a disclosure then it could still offer
> reciprocity but if it did not then it would be excluded from future IETF
> participation (or maybe excluded from being editors or WG chairs).  

Companies can't be excluded because they aren't participants. I'm not
aware of any rule that would allow individuals to be expcitly excluded
because of IPR lapses. It would be pretty radical to create such a
rule, since we claim the we are open to all.

> This
> would seem to be the only "incentive" that could be offered by the IETF.

As others have said, it's for companies to go to court if they wish
to dispute a claim for royalties.

Regards,
    Brian