Actually, Phill, you may well be referring to something earlier, but the case that raised (or created) awareness of the problem in the US and several SDOs who had not been paying enough attention before was ASME vs. Hydrolevel case that started in 1971 and cumulated in a US Supreme Court Decision in 1982. But the problem (which is actually at least two separate potential problems, see below) was known, and discussed in ANSI and ANDI-accredited SDOs, long before that. I would be surprised if there were not similar discussions in ISO and assorted other national standards bodies, but I was not aware of them. The ASME case was special for another reason, because is was less about IPR but about conflicts of interest in interpretation of a standard and violations of antitrust laws. As Scott has heard me say too many times and for too long, I've always been concerned that the IETF's policies concentrate almost exclusively on patent issues and disclosure and largely ignore issues that could be construed as attempts it interfere with competition or violation associated laws and regulations in relevant countries. In a way, those other issues should be even more important to the IETF. As you point out, in many cases when a standards body is used to reinforce or give some advantage to a particular patent, the patent gets invalidated (probably not enough cases, but many) hurting the patent claimant and everyone trying to use the IPR. But taking actions that can be interpreted as conspiracies to restrain trade put the IETF in jeopardy. Much of the standards community was surprised that the courts allowed ASME to continue as a standards developer because the outcome could possibly even have shut them down as a professional society. In that context, while I have no concerns about the personal integrity and ethics of any of the people involved, we now apparently have two separate Areas with more than one AD from the same company. The optics are nonetheless terrible. If someone wanted to devote time to developing an explicit code of ethics for such situations, it would probably help both the IETF and the individuals by being able to show, if questions arose, that there were explicit rules, that they were reasonable, and that they had been followed. best, john --On Sunday, 21 July, 2019 08:36 -0400 Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > It is worth remembering that the original concern arose out of > an episode many decades ago when a patent holder sent people > to a standards meeting to insert a requirement to make use of > technology they had an undeclared interest in.
