A modified charter has been submitted for the Intellectual Property Rights (ipr) working group in the General Area of the IETF. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The modified charter is provided below for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg@ietf.org) by March 1st. +++ Intellectual Property Rights (ipr) =================================== Current Status: Active Working Group Chair(s): Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> General Area Director(s): Brian Carpenter <brc@zurich.ibm.com> General Area Advisor: Brian Carpenter <brc@zurich.ibm.com> Mailing Lists: General Discussion: ipr-wg@ietf.org To Subscribe: ipr-wg-request@ietf.org Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipr-wg/index.html Description of Working Group: The IETF and the Internet have greatly benefited from the free exchange of ideas and technology. For many years the IETF normal behavior was to standardize only unencumbered technology. While the "Tao" of the IETF is still strongly oriented toward unencumbered technology, we can and do make use of technology that has various encumbrances. One of the goals of the IETF IPR policy has been to make it easier for the IETF to make use of encumbered technology when it made sense to do so. This group has attempted to clarify and update that IPR policy, resulting in RFC 3978, RFC 3979 and RFC 3905. The WG has also discussed the possibility of changing the IETF's patent policy, but did not detect a consensus for doing so. At the time of this recharter (February 2006), there are two remaining items of work for the WG: - An issue with the production of derivative works has led to the realization that RFC 2026 and RFC 3978 do not specify exactly the same policy on this matter, and that neither policy, when read literally, may be optimal for the IETF's purpose, in accordance with its mission statement (RFC 3935), its policy of retaining change control of its own documents, and its desire for its documents to be openly available and useful. - The creation of the IETF Trust for managing the IETF IPR has led to the question of how the Trustees should evaluate the benefit of the IETF community as a whole and if necessary the consensus of the IETF on a given matter. Specifically the question arises whether the previous discussions of the IPR WG have led to experience that should be codified for the guidance of the Trustees. The WG will produce 3 documents: - An update to RFC 3978 (BCP) that attempts to specify a complete set of rights with respect to derivative works granted to the IETF by authors, as well as technical updates necessitated by the existence of the Trust - A document (info) giving advice to the IETF Trust on what rights in IETF contributions it should attempt to grant to the public in order to retain change control while allowing open access, resolving the discrepancy between RFC 2026 and RFC 3978 - A document (info) giving other advice to the IETF Trust on IPR handling, based on the IPR WG's experience of discussions in the area The last document may include advice to the IETF Trust on mechanisms for consulting with the community on IPR issues once the IPR WG has closed, if consensus on such advice can be found. The IPR WG may decide to drop the last document from its charter if it decides that it has nothing to say. All documents should have an IETF-wide Last Call before being approved. Goals and Milestones: Done 1st draft of RFC 3978 update Feb 2006 1st draft of granted rights advice doc Feb 2006 1st draft of IPR advice doc Mar 2006 RFC 3978 update to IESG for approval Apr 2006 Granted rights advice to IESG for approval Aug 2006 IPR advice to IESG for approval Oct 2006 Once documents are all published, close WG _______________________________________________ IETF-Announce@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
