Subject: WG Review: Recharter of Intellectual Property Rights (ipr)

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 11:41:57 -0500

A modified charter has been submitted for the Intellectual Property Rights
(ipr) working group in the General Area of the IETF. The IESG has not made any
determination as yet. The modified charter is provided below for informational
purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list
([email-masked]) by March 1st.

+++

Intellectual Property Rights (ipr)
===================================

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s):
Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]> 
Steven Bellovin <[email-masked]>

General Area Director(s):
Brian Carpenter <[email-masked]>

General Area Advisor:
Brian Carpenter <[email-masked]>

Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: [email-masked]
To Subscribe: [email-masked]
Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipr-wg/index.html

Description of Working Group:

The IETF and the Internet have greatly benefited from the free exchange of
ideas and technology. For many years the IETF normal behavior was to standardize
only unencumbered technology.
While the "Tao" of the IETF is still strongly oriented toward unencumbered
technology, we can and do make use of technology that has various encumbrances.
One of the goals of the IETF IPR policy has been to make it easier for the IETF
to make use of encumbered technology when it made sense to do so.

This group has attempted to clarify and update that IPR policy, resulting in
RFC 3978, RFC 3979 and RFC 3905. The WG has also discussed the possibility of
changing the IETF's patent policy, but did not detect a consensus for doing so.

At the time of this recharter (February 2006), there are two remaining items of
work for the WG:

- An issue with the production of derivative works has led to the realization
that RFC 2026 and RFC 3978 do not specify exactly the same policy on this
matter, and that neither policy, when read literally, may be optimal for the
IETF's purpose, in accordance with its mission statement (RFC 3935), its policy
of retaining change control of its own documents, and its desire for its
documents to be openly available and useful.

- The creation of the IETF Trust for managing the IETF IPR has led to the
question of how the Trustees should evaluate the benefit of the IETF community
as a whole and if necessary the consensus of the IETF on a given matter.
Specifically the question arises whether the previous discussions of the IPR WG
have led to experience that should be codified for the guidance of the Trustees.

The WG will produce 3 documents:

- An update to RFC 3978 (BCP) that attempts to specify a complete set of rights
with respect to derivative works granted to the IETF by authors, as well as
technical updates necessitated by the existence of the Trust
- A document (info) giving advice to the IETF Trust on what rights in IETF
contributions it should attempt to grant to the public in order to retain change
control while allowing open access, resolving the discrepancy between RFC 2026
and RFC 3978
- A document (info) giving other advice to the IETF Trust on IPR handling, based
on the IPR WG's experience of discussions in the area

The last document may include advice to the IETF Trust on mechanisms for
consulting with the community on IPR issues once the IPR WG has closed, if
consensus on such advice can be found.

The IPR WG may decide to drop the last document from its charter if it decides
that it has nothing to say.

All documents should have an IETF-wide Last Call before being approved.

Goals and Milestones:

Done 1st draft of RFC 3978 update
Feb 2006 1st draft of granted rights advice doc
Feb 2006 1st draft of IPR advice doc
Mar 2006 RFC 3978 update to IESG for approval
Apr 2006 Granted rights advice to IESG for approval
Aug 2006 IPR advice to IESG for approval
Oct 2006 Once documents are all published, close WG

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