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

[Ron <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 12:30:32AM +0000, DRAGE, Keith (Keith) wrote:
> If Ron can justify such a statement, the he is also in defiance of the IETF
> IPR rules, because he himself is required to make a disclosure. The
> requirement is to disclose if you know of..., not if you own.

Maybe you should actually go read the Note Well RFCs before you engage in
"No U" argumentation that just makes it look like you haven't.

If I owned, or worked for or on behalf of anyone who owned IPR that was
relevant to the work here, I indeed would have disclosed it according to
the obligations noted there.

Since I don't, and I don't actually know specific details of which patents
might apply here (beyond reading of assertions there is a pool, and of
court cases that are being pursued over them, and that many of the people
pushing hard for the adoption of H.264 are holders of them) - I am indeed
discharging the only obligation upon me that I SHOULD point and wave.

> But I believe Stefan is correct. Neither IETF or its contributors has not
> written a document specifying the H.264 codec as an essential part of its
> operation, therefore making a disclosure is not required. If IETF progresses
> to making a statement that incorporation of an H.264 implementation forms an
> essential part of a webrtc specification, then disclosure in IETF will be
> required.

 "Covers or may ultimately Cover a Contribution"

I believe is the language used.

 "unless ... rejected from consideration before a disclosure could reasonably
  be submitted."

And I'm pretty sure we're well past the time of "could reasonably", unless
your position is that we should now immediately reject it from consideration?


> ISO/IEC JTC1 does have a specification for H.264, and I am led to believe
> disclosures of IPR have been made there. Noone involved in this discussion as
> far as I am aware is hiding H.264 IPR. Again I believe as a third party, you
> are also allowed to make IPR disclosures there (certainly every other SDO I
> know of allows third party disclosures).
> 
> And before this degenerates into a discussion of what people want the IETF
> IPR rules to become rather than what they are, take that to the IETF
> discussion list.

 "Contributors must disclose IPR meeting the description in this section;
  there are no exceptions to this rule."

Nobody is arguing for a change to the rules here.  It's the blatant
disregard for them (or perhaps you are trying to subtly demonstrate
that it's simply ignorance of them) which is what concerns me at the
present time.

I'd prefer to just see this remedied by the people who the obligation
falls upon than to make an example of them before the wider IETF.
If it goes that far I would assume it will be with a call for sanctions.


Stephan may still be correct that there is some sneaky back door that
people can hide behind here - but if there is one, all that you've
proved in these statements is that you don't know what it is either.

  Ron