Re: [rtcweb] Matthew's response to straw poll

[cowwoc <[e-mail]>]

On 20/12/2013 2:38 AM, Magnus Westerlund wrote:
> Matthew and Gili,
>
> Matthew, there are no restrictions preventing anyone's legal department
> to provide input directly into this straw poll, it is open to anyone.
> Will you encourage Skype's legal department to provide an input to the poll?
>
> I would also hope that the WG participants have consulted with their
> respective legal counsel in regards to the licensing and other questions
> of legal nature they may have when determining how to answer this straw
> poll.
>
> Gili, can you be more precise in your question regarding IETF consulting
> lawyers? I know IETF has legal counsel, but that is used to avoid that
> IETF as an organization does not create illegal working process etc. The
> legal counsel is to my knowledge not available for IETF participants to
> answer their questions in regards to standardization questions of
> technical nature. One reason for this is clearly economical. I can also
> see that there would be many other reasons, for example the client role,
> the question of what jurisdictions that are of interest. Thus each
> participant would need its own legal counsel if needed.

Hi Magnus,

One idea I was toying with is having everyone chip into a legal pool. We 
would then use this money to contract the services of an odd number of 
legal firms (1 or 3) picked at random that would share their legal 
opinion on the IPR situation of VP8 and H.264, followed by H.263, H.261, 
Theora if there is enough money.

Another approach on this is having VP8-proponents chip into a pool that 
would investigate VP8 IPR, and H.264-proponents pay into a pool that 
would investigate H.264 IPR. Each party must be use an independent legal 
firm (not in-house lawyers) and those firms must publish their legal 
opinion in writing for all to see. We then give the firms an opportunity 
to comment on each other's statements. This is approach open to FUD, but 
hopefully less so since: (a) the firms are not going to be keen on 
tarnishing their name in public (b) the lawyers get to challenge each 
other's positions.

The IETF is not the only organization to run into this kind of 
situation. The first approach I've mentioned is inspired by a real-life 
organization that I'm familiar with.

Gili