Subject: royalty-free blanket statements and reasonable terms

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 10:19:15 -0400

I'm not sure where the WG stands on this issue. I've posted what I
think may be a potential issue (see below), but few have responded on
what (if anything should be done). Either folk think this isn't an
issue to worry about (in which case I guess the current text is OK),
or we need to decide what needs to be done.

What do others think?

Thomas

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
To: "Contreras, Jorge" <[email-masked]>
cc: "Scott Bradner" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:21:25 -0400
Subject: Re: FW: can you chime in on this one? 

"Contreras, Jorge" <[email-masked]> writes:

> I think Thomas's comments present two viable options:

> 1.  Say that the IPR owner must also disclose the
> "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" that it
> would impose; or

> 2.  Require that even companies offering RF
> licenses must disclose specific IPR, just like
> everyone else.

Yes, this captures my points.

Having thought some more about this, I'd like for us to be able to
have 1) be done, so that royalty-free does in practice mean that WGs
don't need to worry about such IPR. That would seem to be the goal,
after all.

But, that raises a potential process issue that I don't know how to
deal with right off. That is, how to go about resolving disputes if
there is disagreement as to whether the "reasonable and
non-discriminatory" are in fact viewed by the community as being such.

This issue already comes up with IPR in standards track documents. On
this topic, RFC 2026 dealt with as follows:

> 10.3.3  Determination of Reasonable and Non-discriminatory Terms
> 
>    The IESG will not make any explicit determination that the assurance
>    of reasonable and non-discriminatory terms for the use of a
>    technology has been fulfilled in practice.  It will instead use the
>    normal requirements for the advancement of Internet Standards to
>    verify that the terms for use are reasonable.  If the two unrelated
>    implementations of the specification that are required to advance
>    from Proposed Standard to Draft Standard have been produced by
>    different organizations or individuals or if the "significant
>    implementation and successful operational experience" required to
>    advance from Draft Standard to Standard has been achieved the
>    assumption is that the terms must be reasonable and to some degree,
>    non-discriminatory.  This assumption may be challenged during the
>    Last-Call period.

Just having the IPR holder state their terms leaves open the question
of who evaluates reasonableness. I sure hope that the IESG isn't
expected to do this on its own. But if a process is needed, what
process would that be, and how could we keep it light weight?

Thomas

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