Hi, I am a new speaker on the "IETF airwaves," but I felt I could not resist the urge to comment. Although I am head of IP at VMware, I can only speak for myself and not for the company. It seems to me that people arguing to establish an IPR Advisory Board have the better argument. I understand that lawyers are loath to opine on issues because they are afraid their opinions might be relied upon, and, in this litigious society, that might somehow result in liability to themselves. Despite that, however, there are ways of providing information that can be useful. In addition, there are economies to be had by everyone's putting their resources together. I have read e-mails from people who advocate that IETF ought not to get involved and, instead, ought to let "users" fend for themselves. These people apparently have resources to deal with all such issues unilaterally. However, in my opinion, even such people are wasting funds for their companies by going it alone on each issue. My experience is that, especially in these financially troubling times, wise use of resources is always a good thing to do. In addition to spreading the expense, there is an additional benefit of taping into the technical resources of many, and using the "eyes of many" to improve the reliability of technical and legal analyses much in the way open source improves software. If nothing else, information provided by such analyses provides a basis for understanding a potential problem. Benefit results, for example, since identifying a bogus problem, enables development to progress unimpeded. Similarly, by identifying a real problem, development may, if people wish, be directed to ways around the problem. It seems to me that a standards group should not merely be a forum to develop a standard, but that it should provide a standard that can be used commercially by at least the group that helped to develop it. That means developing a standard which will not exclude those not having sufficient resources to perform their own IP analysis (and presumably not shared for legal reasons). Otherwise, why work to develop a standard that only the "well heeled" can use confidently. Mike Einschlag -----Original Message----- From: Lawrence Rosen [mailto:lrosen@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 4:50 PM To: ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board Paul Hoffman wants: > In this case, "worked-out" means a document > that describes the the current solution, the advantages and disadvantages > of it, a proposal for a new solution, and a transition plan. Paul, I'm not sure what more you're asking for at this stage. This list is lively with suggestions, convincing me that IPR issues continue to dominate the IETF airwaves. A "worked-out" document would be premature in this context. One suggestion, now a specific topic on this list if you care to respond directly, is for the creation of an IETF IPR Advisory Board to help people everywhere--including thousands of disaffected FSF campaigners--to understand why certain patents (including the Redphone "patent") are not worth worrying about. The charter would be: "Answer IPR questions that are posed by other IETF working groups." The quality of its answers, as with any IETF working group, will be at least partly a function of the quality of its participants. This suggestion is perhaps the most important currently before us, because an IETF IPR Advisory Board will be able to stop FSF campaigns and other distractions before they start with facts instead of fiction. What would YOU suggest for a charter for such an Advisory Board to keep it from crossing into any forbidden areas? Or is it every man and woman for themselves in these patent-infested waters? /Larry Lawrence Rosen Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243 Skype: LawrenceRosen > -----Original Message----- > From: Paul Hoffman [mailto:paul.hoffman@xxxxxxxx] > Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 3:20 PM > To: lrosen@xxxxxxxxxxxx; ietf@xxxxxxxx > Subject: RE: Previous consensus on not changing patent policy (Re: > References to Redphone's "patent") > > At 2:11 PM -0800 2/16/09, Lawrence Rosen wrote: > >Let's forget the past; I acknowledge we lost that argument then among > those > >few who bothered to hum. > > Many of us have heard this in various technical working groups when people > who didn't get their way come back later. Such reconsiderations, > particularly on topics of a non-protocol nature, are rarely embraced. We > are humans with limited time and energy and focus. > > >But are the 1,000 or so emails in recent days from the FSF campaign not a > >loud enough hum to recognize that our IPR policy is out of tune? > > No, it is a statement that a group of people who are not active in the > IETF want us to spend our time and effort to fix a problem they feel that > they have. > > > This is not > >the first such open source campaign either. IETF needs a more sturdy > process > >to deal with IPR issues. Please consider the suggestions now on the > table. > > Where? I see no Internet Draft, nor any significant group of people who > have said they are willing to work on the problem. Seriously, if this is a > significant issue for this motivated group of people, they can do some > research and write one (or probably more) Internet Drafts. > > The IETF has never been swayed by blitzes of a mailing list asking for us > to do someone else's technical work; we should not be swayed by similar > blitzes asking us to do their policy work. We are, however, amazingly (and > sometime painfully) open to discussing worked-out solutions of either a > technical or policy nature. In this case, "worked-out" means a document > that describes the the current solution, the advantages and disadvantages > of it, a proposal for a new solution, and a transition plan. > > --Paul Hoffman, Director > --VPN Consortium _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf