Dean, all these excellent issues have to be dealt with if/when use of RFIDs becomes a normal part of IETF logistics. It's not. Excerpts from Dean Willis on Sun, Sep 13, 2009 09:33:56PM -0500: > Seriously, it does have major implications for intellectual property > lawsuits. > > Let's say JoeBob attends a meeting of the FRILL working group, then > goes home to patent a nifty new innovation in FRILL, which is then > bought for $1 by a patent troll when JoeBob's company goes broke > because his board of directors blew their investment capital on > stocking their break room with headcheese. Said patent troll then > sues some defendant, whose legal team later notices that said FRILL- > enhancement had been discussed at IETF 211 while JoeBob, the > inventor, was in the room, thereby invalidating the patent (and > making JoeBob look like a doofus). > > Okay, so that's not an example with too many negatives, unless > JoeBob decides to sue us for making him look like a doofus. > > Now let's presume that some people remember (and that some other > people don't remember) JoeBob being in the room during the > discussion, but IETF"s RFID tracker log shows that JoeBob was > hanging out with me in the bar. Does IETF's failure to maintain the > record that invalidates the patent make us liable to the defendant? > > Or worse yet, IETF can't produce the RFID logs in response to a > court order, because somebody goofed and deleted them. Was this a > conspiracy to protect the patent troll? Who got bribed to make it > happen? How many hundreds of thousands of euros we would like to > spend on the paperwork related to the various discovery motions we > might have to endure? > > In other words, any retained information increases liability, both > for the accuracy of the retained information and for the > preservation of the retained information. That's why we must both > have a policy about how that information is obtained and preserved, > and we must live up to that policy, whatever it says. > > Of course, the easiest policy is to retain no information. But even > that has its consequences. For example, is deliberate ignorance > consistent with industry best-practices? How does this interact with > the Sarbanes-Oxley requirements of our sponsors? And why would a > startup company stock its break room with headcheese anyhow? _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf