Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > Simon, > > Do you have examples of licenses/IPR declarations that work better with > GPL and other forms of open source? Something for Mark and the rest > of us to use as a model, perhaps? Jari, thank you for asking! I am working on a document with guidelines for free standards in the IETF, and I have written the following regarding patents. Much of the material came from this thread. I have not yet discussed this document in the free software community (which I intend to do before publishing it), so be aware that things may change considerably. /Simon 4. Patent Concerns The IETF rules (see [RFC3978]) demands that authors notify the IETF when they submit documents with patented technology (as far as the authors are aware of). Third parties are also encouraged to submit disclosures about patented technology in others' documents. This process does not guarantee that all IETF documents will have no IPR concerns. That was not the intention, and there are several documents with a complicated IPR situation. One example is the standards-track use of the patented RSA public-key algorithm. Fortunately, the IETF process encourages and makes it easy to verify whether there are known patents for a particular document. If a documented is known to be patented, that may complicate the use of the document in free software environments. The first conclusion here is that readers will have to search the online IETF IPR Disclosure page at http://www.ietf.org/ipr/ for the document they are interested in. 4.1. What To Look For In A Patent Disclosure An alternative title for this section may be 'How To Write A Free- Software Friendly Patent Disclosure'. Words to look for in a patent license is free-of-charge, world-wide, royaltee-free, perpetual and non-exclusive right to the patent. Some patent disclosures demands that you to write to the patent owner and request a license. Such a clause leads to problems if a company goes away or won't respond to requests. Depending on the text used, it may even require that every user of the software is required to apply for a license. That is not feasible for free software, which is widely distributed to everyone. The recommendation here is that the license should grant rights directly to third parties. Some patent licenses restricts how you can use the technology. This causes an incompatibility with many free software licenses, which says that no additional restrictions may be placed on the redistribution of the software. Further, free software is intended to be generally useful. If one field-of-use is restricted, that goes against the spirit of free software. The recommendation here is that patent licenses should not impose any additional restrictions before granting the rights. 4.2. Handling Submarine Patents In some cases, patent disclosures are filed late in the process. It may after a WG has accepted a document, after it has been last- called, after it has been approved by the IESG, or even after it has been published as an RFC. We call such late notification of earlier patents as a submarine patent. If the document has already been approved as an RFC, the published document itself cannot be modified. However, the documents' status on the standards track can be modified by publishing an approved document containing the reasons for doing so. If the patent disclosure is not considered to grant sufficient rights to third parties, it is recommended to consider alternative technologies and to write a document moving the RFC with patented technology off the standards track. In the other situations, it is recommended that interested parties evaluate the patent disclosure and re-evaluate their earlier decision to accept, last-call or approve the document. 4.3. Example License Text Here is a simplistic patent license that would grant third parties the necessary rights in order to use it in free software. X grants a worldwide, non-exclusive, fully-paid, perpetual, royaltee-free patent license to everyone for any purpose. [XXX: Most likely, this section will be heavily modified based on feedback from the community.] _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf