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

[Lorenzo Miniero <[e-mail]>]

Just FYI (for all the group, actually), I remember we had a F2F discussion in Atlanta about IPR in the IETF. Specifically, Scott Bradner gave a presentation during the RTCWEB session. You can find the recordings here:

http://recordings.conf.meetecho.com/Recordings/watch.jsp?recording=IETF85_RTCWEB_SESSION_I&chapter=part_3

Hopefully it will help clarify what is actually supposed to happen.

Lorenzo


On Sat, 14 Dec 2013 20:58:55 +1030
Ron <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> Hi Markus,
> 
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 07:48:56AM +0000, [e-mail] wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > My and Nokia's interpretation has been that since neither of H.264 nor VP8
> > are IETF specifications, there is no obligation for anyone to disclose IPR on
> > them in the IETF, even if there may be IETF specifications that refer to
> > them. For H.264 all Nokia's IPR is publicly declared in ISO/IEC/ITU. For VP8
> > Nokia decided voluntarily to do the declaration to make it open and clear
> > what the Nokia position on that is.
> 
> Do you have a reference to something that is the basis of that interpretation?
> 
> I may well be missing something here, but I'm not seeing any exception that
> could be interpreted in that way.
> 
> If we were making this an optional extra technology we can interop with,
> then I could sort of see how this might be considered out of scope for the
> IETF to be responsible for, but the drafts submitted wrt to H.264 are all
> proposing to make it mandatory for WebRTC.  Which means the IETF would be
> effectively coopting this as a standard, since anyone implementing WebRTC
> MUST implement it.  That would mean that it _is_ on the IETF standard track,
> (albeit by some back door) and as far as I can see, means it falls foul of
> at least 2 requirements at the present time:
> 
> 
>  9.  Change Control for Technologies
> 
>    The IETF must have change control over the technology described in
>    any standards track IETF Documents in order to fix problems that may
>    be discovered or to produce other derivative works.
> 
> (which indeed may not be a problem specific to H.264, but let's not get
> too sidetracked by this one at this stage, since this or some other WG
> could fix that fairly easily by publishing an RFC if necessary - but we
> may indeed need to fix that before all is said and done)
> 
> 
> And the requirements of section 6, which I won't quote again except to
> note once more that the applicable clause has a "no excuses" requirement
> 
>  "Contributors must disclose IPR meeting the description in this
>    section; there are no exceptions to this rule."
> 
> Which since you are listed as one of the Authors of (at least?) one
> of the H.264 proposal drafts, would seem to explicitly disallow the
> interpretation you suggest.
> 
> 
> draft-burman-rtcweb-h264-proposal even makes no reference whatsoever to
> the out of pool IPR held by Nokia (and others?), and seems to imply that
> the MPEG-LA subset is all that would need to be licenced.  This would
> seem to fall well short of even the bare minimum of due diligence
> disclosure to the working group.
> 
> 
> Since making this mandatory _would_ expose all implementors of this
> IETF standard to the IPR in question, I really can't see how "oh that's
> been declared somewhere else already" is an acceptable way to meet the
> IETF's requirements.  That would completely defeat the purpose of having
> these declarations be a mandatory part of defining IETF standards.
> 
> If they are already declared somewhere else then that indeed should make
> it easier to make the necessary declarations here, but I don't see what
> might absolve the people with such an obligation from still making them?
> 
> 
> This seems like information that in the absence of, we can't possibly
> even consider H.264 to be a serious contender for acceptance by the
> IETF as an integral and essential part of one of its standards.
> 
> So afaics, either somebody needs to point out what I'm missing here
> (with something more definitive than "my opinion is"), the people with
> obligations to disclose need to do so, or we need to simply remove H.264
> from any further consideration as MTI.
> 
> 
> Thanks to those who responded actually taking this question seriously
> though, it shouldn't be hard to resolve one way or the other.
> 
>   Cheers,
>   Ron
> 
> 
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-- 
Lorenzo Miniero, COB

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