John, Brian Most standards organizations require that participants who have, or whose company has, IPR relevant to a potential standard, disclose this at an early stage and at least prior to publication. The participants in the IETF are individuals however RFC3979 addresses this by stating that any individual participating in an IETF discussion "must" make a disclosure if they are aware of IPR from themselves, their employer or sponsor, that could be asserted against an implementation of a contribution. The question this raises is - what does participation in a discussion mean? This has been interpreted by courts to mean members of a standards body, people that are subscribed to the email list of the standards body and more broadly, people that would have known that a standard was being developed. Asking the participants in an IETF WG (and not just authors) to disclose any IPR they are aware of that may impact a draft is simply implementing the policy outlined in RFC3979. Personally I'd like to see a broader requirement that IETF participants are asked to request that their company or sponsor perform a quick search of their own patents to see if there is any relevant IPR. Unfortunately, while standards organizations define their patent policies, the interpretation of these is often done in the legal system in the context of a patent infringement case. While we don't like this - it is the world we live in, and we should make sure that the IETF patent policy is implemented in a way that reduces the likelihood of litigation against someone that implements a draft/ RFC/ standard. Regards Alan Clark On 9/18/13 4:23 PM, "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > --On Thursday, September 19, 2013 07:57 +1200 Brian E Carpenter > <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On 17/09/2013 05:34, Alan Clark wrote: >> ... >>> It should be noted that the duty to disclose IPR is NOT ONLY >>> for the authors of a draft, and the IETF "reminder" system >>> seems to be focused solely on authors. The duty to disclose >>> IPR lies with any individual or company that participates in >>> the IETF not just authors. >> >> Companies don't participate in the IETF; the duty of >> disclosure is specifically placed on individual contributors >> and applies to patents "reasonably and personally known" to >> them. >> >> IANAL but I did read the BCP. > > Brian, > > That isn't how I interpreted Alan's point. My version would be > that, if the shepherd template writeup says "make sure that the > authors are up-to-date" (or anything equivalent) it should also > say "ask/remind the WG participants too". IMO, that is a > perfectly reasonable and orderly suggestion (and no lawyer is > required to figure it out). One inference from Glen's point > that authors have already certified that they have provided > anything they need to provide by the time an I-D is posted with > the "full compliance" language is that it may actually be more > important to remind general participants in the WG than to ask > the authors. > > john > > >