On Sep 16, 2013, at 1:37 PM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > (2) Whether the "submitted in full conformance..." statement in > I-Ds is sufficient to cover IPR up to the point of posting of > the I-D. If the answer is "no", then there is a question of why > we are wasting the bits. If it is "yes", as I assume it is, > then any pre-sausage questions can and should be limited to IPR > that might be new to one or more of the authors. This is a claim in the boilerplate which the IETF, not the authors, are making. So asking the question is entirely appropriate; the authors' answers need to be known to the IESG prior to publication, and the fact that the boilerplate says what it says does not mean that the authors' answers are known. This isn't an insult to the authors—it's simply a practicality: evidence suggests that not all authors at all times are aware of what the boilerplate actually means, and this isn't surprising since it's added by the tool, not typed in each time by each author. So whether this counts as a requirement or not I don't know, but on a practical level, asking the question saves time and reduces ambiguity; it's hard to see that as a negative, and it's astonishing that a long-time IETF participant could conceive it to be a deliberate offense.