> Russ Housley wrote: > > > > BCP 79 says: > > > > "Reasonably and personally known": means something an individual > > knows personally or, because of the job the individual holds, > > would reasonably be expected to know. This wording is used to > > indicate that an organization cannot purposely keep an individual > > in the dark about patents or patent applications just to avoid the > > disclosure requirement. But this requirement should not be > > interpreted as requiring the IETF Contributor or participant (or > > his or her represented organization, if any) to perform a patent > > search to find applicable IPR. > > > > Your suggestion seems to be in direct conflict with BCP 79. > IMHO your quote from BCP79 (page 4, bullet l.) is a very important > point in BCP79. I can not speak for others, but the Internet Proxy > of our company blocks urls to all "well known" online patent search > and patent publication sites (and these are the only blocked sites > I've ever encountered) for the simple reason of the insane US patent > laws with this 3-fold "punitive damages" for "willful infringement" > of a patent, i.e. a patent that was known to exist when shipping. > As engineers, we MUST NOT read any patents because of this. > All of the patent reasarch stuff is done by patent lawyers exclusively. I don't know if a similar block exists, but the policy is the same for us. Such a policy, if implemented, could easily lead to various people being unable to participate in the process. > btw. I personally know only about one patent where I refused to be > listed as inventor because I considered my contribution to it to be > "obvious to someone skilled in the technology". When I read the > description after it had been processed by patent lawyers, I had > serious difficulties understanding what that text meant... A pretty common occurance, unfortunately. Ned