Re: [Techspec] RFC Author Count and IPR

["todd glassey" <[e-mail]>]

Bob
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Braden" <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Cc: <[e-mail]>; <[e-mail]>; <[e-mail]>;
<[e-mail]>
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 9:35 AM
Subject: Re: [Techspec] RFC Author Count and IPR


>
>
> Todd Glassey wrote:
>
>   *>
>   *> This is a very bad thing, since each of those authors has legal
control over
>   *> their portions of the work or derivatives of their contribution
within the
>   *> work itself. I.e. they are all legal signatories to any conveyance of
>   *> copyrights or derivative use rights including implementaiton rights.
>   *>
>
> This is all very puzzling.

yeah I know - hey I didnt get into the thick of IP Law until I had to sue
someone over the violation of a patent, and since I am not a lawyer I
legally cannot render an opinion other than my personal one. So that
disclaimer taken care of... lets walk these logic-statements out and see
where they lead...

> Suppose that document editor X in a WG

Is the DE (Document Editor) an employee or party of the WG framework or a
member of it, or both, and what role would they be acting as in this
example.

> receives a paragraph that has been crafted by another WG member Y.

"Crafted" means what? that the party was the original creator of that IP or
that they editied the IP as a DE for instance. The reasons for asking are
relative to who would own the CR's... My take would be that if the person in
WG "Y" is the creator of the IP, and its referenced in another "Standards
Initiative" somewhere that this likely would trigger the RESEARCH EXEMPTION
in the US Copyright Act, and so no release would be necessary. Further with
the way the releases are now, once the IP is submitted to the IETF, anyone
else in any other WG can use it or its derivatives as well within the ISOC
or IETF processes without any notice as far as I can tell.

We might want to change that as well to provide traceability back to the
originating source of the IP.

Assume now that one of the WG's is in OASIS or ITU or ANSI for instance. How
does the OASIS CR get modified by a source IP License in the Boilerplate
that says "Any and all uses" which seems like it would violate OASIS's RC
for instance.

> Also, suppose that in fitting the paragraph into the document, X
> changes the text a bit (or a lot).  Now, does Y retain "legal
> control" (presumably you mean copyright) over the paragraph as
> it finally appears in the finished document?

I think that would depend on the conveyance model to the IETF. My
understanding in the case of the TRUST is that the TRUST would own
everything.... so "No" - but generally I would think that the answer here is
that core rights to the underlying IP are with Owner Y and the derivative
words and the rights to them belong to the author of X but the Author of X
does not own the rights to Y so they cannot convey anything but the rights
to their words to whoever they are selling, licensing or giving them to.

>
> Bob Braden

Bob -
Take for a closing example, the two ISI Powertpoint Templates. These are
both copyrighted documents which are templates for content to be added into,
amazingly just like the IETF's word Document Templates, or the "Instructions
as to what an ID must contain and be conformant to" in the controlling IPR
works, what I refer to as the unheavenly twins - meaning BCP78 and 79 et Al.
The derivative work is the users' content encased and integrated with the
template and the processes for using the template which are documented in
ancillary or adjunct documents.

So let me ask you, who owns the original content and the derivatve here? How
about after one creates the presentation, who owns the template after that?
Also what follow-on rights to that template does that Author have??? The
answer should be none.

If you have questions about that I suggest that ISI call the University's
Legal Office - they will have answers immediatly for the control of the ISI
templates. Apply those same process policies to the IETF and we are clean.


Todd Glassey


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