--On Thursday, August 14, 2008 9:43 AM -0500 Eric Gray <eric.gray@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Another point to consider is that a very-likely-to-be-valid reason for removing an IPR disclosure is if an organization's legal representative(s) convince the IETF's legal beagles that an IPR disclosure was made innappropriately - such as anonymously, or by an explicitly unauthorized person (such as a disgruntled ex-employee or a competitor). There must be a way to handle this situation.
On the other hand, a disgruntled ex-employee, a particularly nasty competitor, or someone who went to law school on Mars might try to attack a legitimate posting by claiming that an earlier posting was invalid and asking that it be taken down. The opportunities for DoS attacks and generally nasty behavior are rife here and, since IETF doesn't have company members, making an assessment of who is legitimate or not when there are conflicting claims could become quite costly in IETF and/or attorney time or money.
Regardless of what the IETF does, there are provisions for getting almost anything removed from someone else's web site, especially for web sites hosted in the US and, I believe, Europe. The company involved could find a judge to issue a court order requiring that material be removed or even, under DMCA, make a claim that the earlier posting violated copyright restrictions and issue a "takedown" demand. Presumably the IETF would have to comply with court orders and would comply with a DMCA notice that appeared legitimate. And both of those, especially the first, give us good protection from bogus requests (or, worse, a flood of such requests) without causing us unreasonable vunerability to nonsense.
john _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf