On 2009-07-31 02:25, Pete Resnick wrote:
> On 7/30/09 at 3:03 PM +0100, Samuel Weiler wrote:
>
>> What harms would come from destroying those old records and/or not
>> collecting such details in the future? And how widespread is the
>> support for destroying them?
>
> Repeating something I just mentioned to Sam in the hallway (and IANAL,
> even though I teach some of this stuff to engineers):
>
> There is some case law that says that if you participate (even
> passively) in a standards body in which patent disclosure is required,
> and you choose not to disclose your patents, you may lose your rights to
> assert the patents. Having a blue sheet with someone's name on it may be
> sufficient for a court to find that the person can't assert. I think
> that makes the blue sheets worth keeping.
I think that we *care* about IPR disclosures and that we *hate* the idea
of people observing IETF activity and concealing relevant patents. So having
a record of WG attendance is important; having a record of mailing list
membership would be the same. We want to make sure that people can't
falsely plead ignorance in case of missing IPR disclosures.
Indeed, it isn't the IETF itself that would end up in court, but our records
can end up in court as evidence that a patent holder did (or did not)
participate in a standards discussion and did (or did not) make an
appropriate IPR disclosure.
That means keeping attendance records for many years - at least for the
lifetime of a hypothetical patent.
I agree with Alissa that having an explicit privacy policy would be a
good idea, but the fact of participation in an open standards process
certainly cannot be considered a private matter. Exactly the opposite,
in fact.
Brian
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