Re: [rtcweb] H.264 IPR disclosures (or persistent lack thereof)

[Harald Alvestrand <[e-mail]>]

On 12/16/2013 12:09 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> * Harald Alvestrand wrote:
>> On 12/16/2013 01:50 AM, DRAGE, Keith (Keith) wrote:
>>> Of course if you really do want an IETF IPR disclosure under way, then
>>> submit a draft that makes both codecs mandatory and asks for it to be a
>>> WG item. The codec declarations will have to be made against that
>>> document. But do you really believe that will produce any surprise
>>> declarations.
>>>
>>> That draft WG document at the moment does not exist.
>> Keith, it is completely unclear to me why such a draft would cause more
>> disclosures to come forth, given that we have one draft proposing
>> declaring H.264 CBP mandatory that caused no IPR disclosures, and
>> another draft proposing declaring VP8 mandatory that, again, caused no
>> IPR disclosures.
> It looks to me as though the expectation is that once a document is made
> an official Working Group draft then others than those contributing the
> draft have to make disclosures, and since as far as I can tell the draft
> to make VP8 mandatory is not an official Working Group draft, making it
> one would then cause more disclosures to come forth, as you put it. That
> expectation might not be justified but the interpretation of the comment
> above seemed straightforward.
This may be an expectation that some people have, but it has no 
grounding whatsoever in the IETF IPR disclosure rules, where the gating 
factor is that it has been "contributed", and that others "realize" that 
the IPR they know about applies to the contribution.

RFC 3979 section 6.2.1 is pretty explicit. Nowhere in the document is 
the concept of "working group draft" mentioned.

It's been pointed out any number of times that this is what the rules say.

I won't dictate anyone's actions - there are plenty of reasons (some 
good, some bad) that people might conclude that the right action for 
them is to act in ways that are not in accordance with the rules - but 
the rules say what they say - and that does NOT mention "working group 
draft adoption"; the rules apply to ANYTHING that is contributed.