Subject: Additional proposal for BCP79-bis: soft RAND

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:43:37 +0000

Hi,

I can imagine the immediate groan of the old-timers here, but please hear me out and do not dismiss as impossible just because it was a difficult discussion before…

I'm proposing a "soft RAND" declaration requirement as follows:

If a patent disclosure includes licensing terms, those terms need to be at a minimum "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory on a world-wide basis".

The reason is facilitation of normative referencing of IETF RFCs by outside RAND organizations, and avoiding distracting non-technical discussions in technical meetings of those organizations.  This is important as IETF RFCs are being referenced in many such RAND organizations; the IETF is mostly a toolbox creator (never mind the few examples to the contrary like rtcweb), so facilitating the reference of such RFCs by customer SDOs is important.  It also solves a real-world problem that I have witness personally at least twice over the past 10 years or so (see below).

What I want to see is that we can avoid henceforth the discussion of "exotic" terms that may not be at least world-wide RAND.  The proposal somewhat restricts the freedom of choosing licensing conditions; you can still write whatever you want, but CBCP79bis would override more restrictive terms by providing a RAND option by policy.  That said, a rightholder would still have the option not to include any terms, which would hopefully lead those reading those disclosures to the correct conclusion, namely that world-wide-RAND terms may not be available.

The vast majority of declaration practice is not going to change by this proposed addition to BCP79.  However, situations like the two below (which I both witnessed personally) could possibly be avoided henceforth.

Example 1: zrtp
According to ZRTP related IPR disclosures: "[…]  If the "ZRTP Disclosure Flag" in the ZRTP specification is applicable to Your implementation, and You knowingly fail to properly implement it in a truthful manner, and You are informed of this fact and fail to remedy it within 90 days, then any patent license for the specification granted to You under this License shall terminate."
Background: (Note that I'm not a security expert, and the description may not entirely be correct technically—but even if it were incorrect, the procedural problem mentioned still exists).  The ZRTP disclosure flag indicates that there are no "backdoors" in encryption vs. that there may be backdoors (i.e. the communication is not fully secure).  It was claimed that, in many legislations, a telco carrier needs to include backdoors to their equipment for legal intercept, and operators need to make it available for that use.  By implementing the ZRTP disclosure flag truthfully, as required to keep one's license, it would be impossible to avoid "lying" to the user about a "secure" RTP session in the sense that no one but authorities for lawful intercept can tap into the session.  It was suggested that this is not non-discriminatory on a world-wide basis as it effectively disallows the deployment of equipment or services that allow for wiretapping.  Please note that I do not take a position whether the disclosure made is actually RAND—but I do claim that its ambiguity has led to waste of resources by procedural and legal discussions in technical meetings in, IRRC, ITU-T SG16 as well as 3GPP Sax (SA4 and, I believe also the security SA—forgot the number).

Example 2: Certain FEC codes for flute and fecframe
The previous owner of patents related to a certain class of FEC codes provided a patent disclosure with terms indicating that they are not able to grant a license under RAND/reciprocity terms on a world-wide basis in certain cases.  The rumor mill said that their choice was due to DoD contracts which would disallow world-wide licensing as that would be support for axis of evil states.  After acquisition, the current rightholder had those disclosures removed and replaced with their standard RAND statement, so I can't cite them anymore.
According to my recollection, these statements were noticed and discussed at great lengths in 3GPP SA4.  I have heard rumors that similar discussions were conducted in DVB.  A low level technical meeting started discussion about the interpretation of the ETSI patent policy (which, as many of us know here, is not exactly a document easily accessible to network engineers).  Procedural arguments were made.  A lot of meeting hours were wasted.  The issue went away magically at some point in time, as certain opponents of the technology gave up their opposition.

Thanks for considering,
Stepjhan

---

From: "Black, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:22:10 -0400

Stephan,

I'm going to disagree, because the "at a minimum" portion of the proposal appears to require the secretariat to obtain legal review of whether the "at a minimum" requirement has been met when the disclosure submission indicates custom licensing terms, and moreover will have the effect of withholding potentially useful information from the community when no licensing terms are indicated by a discloser who would otherwise indicate terms below the proposed minimum.

I think both of those would be bad outcomes.  Moreover, the current disclosure form already has an ability to indicate:

c) Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory License to All Implementers with Possible Royalty/Fee.

IMHO, prohibiting disclosure of licensing terms that do not fall into that category (or b) Royalty-Free RAND or a) No License Required) deprives the community of potentially useful information.

IMHO, it would be with adding text to the disclosure form on possible consequences of not selecting one of those three alternatives (a-c) in the hope of encouraging disclosures to select one of them, but I strongly oppose imposing a restriction that has the practical effect of adding legal burdens to the IETF and withholding useful information from the community.

Thanks,
--David

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Stephan Wenger
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:44 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Additional proposal for BCP79-bis: soft RAND

Hi,

I can imagine the immediate groan of the old-timers here, but please hear me out and do not dismiss as impossible just because it was a difficult discussion before...

Example 1: zrtp
According to ZRTP related IPR disclosures: "[...]  If the "ZRTP Disclosure Flag" in the ZRTP specification is applicable to Your implementation, and You knowingly fail to properly implement it in a truthful manner, and You are informed of this fact and fail to remedy it within 90 days, then any patent license for the specification granted to You under this License shall terminate."
Background: (Note that I'm not a security expert, and the description may not entirely be correct technically-but even if it were incorrect, the procedural problem mentioned still exists).  The ZRTP disclosure flag indicates that there are no "backdoors" in encryption vs. that there may be backdoors (i.e. the communication is not fully secure).  It was claimed that, in many legislations, a telco carrier needs to include backdoors to their equipment for legal intercept, and operators need to make it available for that use.  By implementing the ZRTP disclosure flag truthfully, as required to keep one's license, it would be impossible to avoid "lying" to the user about a "secure" RTP session in the sense that no one but authorities for lawful intercept can tap into the session.  It was suggested that this is not non-discriminatory on a world-wide basis as it effectively disallows the deployment of equipment or services that allow for wiretapping.  Please note that I do not take a position whether the disclosure made is actually RAND-but I do claim that its ambiguity has led to waste of resources by procedural and legal discussions in technical meetings in, IRRC, ITU-T SG16 as well as 3GPP Sax (SA4 and, I believe also the security SA-forgot the number).

Thanks for considering,
Stepjhan

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:57:57 +0000

Stephan,

> I can imagine the immediate groan of the old-timers here, but please hear me out and do not dismiss as impossible just because it was a difficult discussion before…

The thing that was difficult when I first joined this discussion (which has
been going on for twenty years) is indeed still difficult today: it's a
minefield for the IETF to judge the acceptability of a given set of
licensing terms. Actually BCP79 makes it clear that the rules don't set
objective criteria; they defer the question on a case-by-case basis.
There's no reason that world-wide validity of the license conditions
can't be considered today, when deciding whether to adopt an
encumbered technology. (Remember, that's what we choose: technology,
not license.)

It seems to me that what you are suggesting belongs in RFC3669bis
(see section 5.6).

   Brian

> Background: (Note that I'm not a security expert, and the description may not entirely be correct technically—but even if it were incorrect, the procedural problem mentioned still exists).  The ZRTP disclosure flag indicates that there are no "backdoors" in encryption vs. that there may be backdoors (i.e. the communication is not fully secure).  It was claimed that, in many legislations, a telco carrier needs to include backdoors to their equipment for legal intercept, and operators need to make it available for that use.  By implementing the ZRTP disclosure flag truthfully, as required to keep one's license, it would be impossible to avoid "lying" to the user about a "secure" RTP session in the sense that no one but authorities for lawful intercept can tap into the session.  It was suggested that this is not non-discriminatory on a world-wide basis as it effectively disallows the deployment of equipment or services that allow for wiretapping.  Please note that I do not 
take a position whether the disclosure made is actually RAND—but I do claim that its ambiguity has led to waste of resources by procedural and legal discussions in technical meetings in, IRRC, ITU-T SG16 as well as 3GPP Sax (SA4 and, I believe also the security SA—forgot the number).
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ipr-wg mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg

---

From: tsg <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:17:01 -0700

> objective criteria; they defer the question on a case-by-case basis.

The real issue is whether its reasonable to "extort a IP license 
agreement for the creation of the standard". That's it in a nutshell, 
answering the question "Do the members of the IETF have the right to 
extort a license from an IP owner for the creation of a model for 
interoperability which is after all what an IETF standard is supposed to 
be" and if so who should that license benefit?

There is a further issue - an IP License is only as powerful as the 
support behind it.

Todd

---

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:49:07 +0000

Hi David & Brian, group,
This email responds to a point both of you raised, albeit in a slightly
different formulation: determining of RAND compliance by the IETF.
I think you both misunderstood my idea, which means that it was not
expressed properly.
I agree that it cannot be the IETF's job to judge whether a disclosure is
in compliance with RAND, and it is not my intention to require it to do
so.  Instead, I want to shift that burden to the discloser.  If a
discloser chooses to add terms, a user of the spec could, according to
policy, rely on RAND terms on a world-wide basis.  If a disclosure and
rightholder would, later, dispute that it had agreed, as a minimum, to
RAND terms, then it would be a problem of the disclosers, their lawyers,
and ultimately the courts to explain.  Determining RAND compliance is not
really unknown territory for the lawyers nor courts.
Clearer?
Stephan

By simply requiring that a

On 3.14.2013 10:57 , "Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>> I can imagine the immediate groan of the old-timers here, but please
>>hear me out and do not dismiss as impossible just because it was a
>>difficult discussion beforeŠ
>
>> If a patent disclosure includes licensing terms, those terms need to be
>>at a minimum "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory on a world-wide basis".
>> 
>> The reason is facilitation of normative referencing of IETF RFCs by
>>outside RAND organizations, and avoiding distracting non-technical
>>discussions in technical meetings of those organizations.  This is
>>important as IETF RFCs are being referenced in many such RAND
>>organizations; the IETF is mostly a toolbox creator (never mind the few
>>examples to the contrary like rtcweb), so facilitating the reference of
>>such RFCs by customer SDOs is important.  It also solves a real-world
>>problem that I have witness personally at least twice over the past 10
>>years or so (see below).
>> 
>> What I want to see is that we can avoid henceforth the discussion of
>>"exotic" terms that may not be at least world-wide RAND.  The proposal
>>somewhat restricts the freedom of choosing licensing conditions; you can
>>still write whatever you want, but CBCP79bis would override more
>>restrictive terms by providing a RAND option by policy.  That said, a
>>rightholder would still have the option not to include any terms, which
>>would hopefully lead those reading those disclosures to the correct
>>conclusion, namely that world-wide-RAND terms may not be available.
>> 
>> The vast majority of declaration practice is not going to change by
>>this proposed addition to BCP79.  However, situations like the two below
>>(which I both witnessed personally) could possibly be avoided henceforth.
>> 
>> Example 1: zrtp
>> According to ZRTP related IPR disclosures: "[Š]  If the "ZRTP
>>Disclosure Flag" in the ZRTP specification is applicable to Your
>>implementation, and You knowingly fail to properly implement it in a
>>truthful manner, and You are informed of this fact and fail to remedy it
>>within 90 days, then any patent license for the specification granted to
>>You under this License shall terminate."
>> Background: (Note that I'm not a security expert, and the description
>>may not entirely be correct technically‹but even if it were incorrect,
>>the procedural problem mentioned still exists).  The ZRTP disclosure
>>flag indicates that there are no "backdoors" in encryption vs. that
>>there may be backdoors (i.e. the communication is not fully secure).  It
>>was claimed that, in many legislations, a telco carrier needs to include
>>backdoors to their equipment for legal intercept, and operators need to
>>make it available for that use.  By implementing the ZRTP disclosure
>>flag truthfully, as required to keep one's license, it would be
>>impossible to avoid "lying" to the user about a "secure" RTP session in
>>the sense that no one but authorities for lawful intercept can tap into
>>the session.  It was suggested that this is not non-discriminatory on a
>>world-wide basis as it effectively disallows the deployment of equipment
>>or services that allow for wiretapping.  Please note that I do not
>take a position whether the disclosure made is actually RAND‹but I do
>claim that its ambiguity has led to waste of resources by procedural and
>legal discussions in technical meetings in, IRRC, ITU-T SG16 as well as
>3GPP Sax (SA4 and, I believe also the security SA‹forgot the number).
>> 
>> The previous owner of patents related to a certain class of FEC codes
>>provided a patent disclosure with terms indicating that they are not
>>able to grant a license under RAND/reciprocity terms on a world-wide
>>basis in certain cases.  The rumor mill said that their choice was due
>>to DoD contracts which would disallow world-wide licensing as that would
>>be support for axis of evil states.  After acquisition, the current
>>rightholder had those disclosures removed and replaced with their
>>standard RAND statement, so I can't cite them anymore.
>> According to my recollection, these statements were noticed and
>>discussed at great lengths in 3GPP SA4.  I have heard rumors that
>>similar discussions were conducted in DVB.  A low level technical
>>meeting started discussion about the interpretation of the ETSI patent
>>policy (which, as many of us know here, is not exactly a document easily
>>accessible to network engineers).  Procedural arguments were made.  A
>>lot of meeting hours were wasted.  The issue went away magically at some
>>point in time, as certain opponents of the technology gave up their
>>opposition.
>> 
>> Thanks for considering,
>> Stepjhan
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>

---

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:01:47 +0000

Hi David,

From: <Black>, David <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Date: Thursday, 14 March, 2013 10:22
To: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>, "[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>" <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Subject: RE: Additional proposal for BCP79-bis: soft RAND

Stephan,

I’m going to disagree, because the “at a minimum” portion of the proposal appears to require the secretariat to obtain legal review of whether the “at a minimum” requirement has been met when the disclosure submission indicates custom licensing terms,

Please see my email posted a few minutes ago on that subject.

and moreover will have the effect of withholding potentially useful information from the community when no licensing terms are indicated by a discloser who would otherwise indicate terms below the proposed minimum.

I considered that.  I believe we have to balance the ease of use of RFCs in outside organizations, and freedom of disclosing exotic licensing terms in the IETF that, in the view of the discloser, do not fulfill a world-wide RAND commitment.  My personal feelings about that are clear.

You point out one problem, though, that I have not fully considered.  Indeed, with the sentence I suggested, it would be impossible for a rightholder to submit admitted non-RAND terms to the community.  Personally, I somewhat doubt to what extent that would matter in the IETF's current climate re IPR, but I agree that more consideration is required to address that point as that climate can change.

Thanks,
--David

From: [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Stephan Wenger
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:44 AM
To: [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
Subject: Additional proposal for BCP79-bis: soft RAND

Hi,

Example 1: zrtp

Thanks for considering,
Stepjhan

---

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:10:15 +0000

Hi Brian,
Please see inline.

>encumbered technology. (Remember, that's what we choose: technology,

I have responded to this concern in one of my previous emails.

>It seems to me that what you are suggesting belongs in RFC3669bis

No.  The mechanism I have in mind would work only as an integral binding
part of the policy.

We could integrate a recommendation in 3669bis to the extent that exotic
non-RAND terms are better avoided for they have created problems to the
normative referencing of the docs to which the terms pertain.  Such a
non-binding advice is better than nothing.  However, given how few people
(including those who make disclosures) read RFC 3669 or take it seriously
(it being informative), I would rather see a policy change than
non-binding advise.

Stephan

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:11:59 -0400

I don't see much point.  If the claimant is going to have to defend
their position anyway, they will already structure their terms along
those lines, regardless of what the IETF says.  The IETF doesn't need to
put energy into this, and we already have two informational RFCs that
give guidance to working groups on how to deal with all kinds of claims
(3669, 6702).  Just like in some WGs, I think we need to differentiate
between those things that need to be standardized and those that are
just endpoint implementation issues, and thus unnecessary for the IETF
to touch.

Scott

---

From: "Lawrence Rosen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:44:16 -0700

Stephan Wenger wrote:
> I believe we have to balance the ease of use of RFCs in outside
organizations, and freedom of disclosing exotic licensing terms in the IETF
that, in the view of the discloser, do not fulfill a world-wide RAND
commitment.  My personal feelings about that are clear.

Hi Stephan, I too "can imagine the immediate groan of the old-timers here,"
but I want to share your concern.

I recently participated in a Patent Advisory Group at W3C that was created
when a Working Group noticed that an IETF specification it had incorporated
by reference had a purported patent encumbrance. The facts of that case and
its resolution are not what is important now. But I mention it to emphasize
that what IETF does with its patent policies actually affects the real
world, even when some of you choose to ignore patent issues yourselves.

At the very least, as Stephan suggests, please require IETF contributors to
identify their patent claims and licensing terms unambiguously so we can
avoid the IETF standards that W3C and others can't live with, even if there
are still relics of an older age in IETF who choose to ignore patents.

Quite frankly, Stephan, I believe IETF ought to go MUCH farther in
clarifying patent encumbrances to its specifications than you suggest. OASIS
and W3C have both adopted meaningful patent policies. So should IETF. But at
the very least, as I said above, ..

/Larry (myself an "old-timer" so I mean no disrespect)

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com/>
www.rosenlaw.com)

3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482

Office: 707-485-1242

Linkedin profile:  <http://linkd.in/XXpHyu> http://linkd.in/XXpHyu 

From: Stephan Wenger [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 10:02 AM
To: Black, David; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Additional proposal for BCP79-bis: soft RAND

Hi David,

From: <Black>, David <[email-masked]>
Date: Thursday, 14 March, 2013 10:22 
To: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Additional proposal for BCP79-bis: soft RAND

Stephan,

I'm going to disagree, because the "at a minimum" portion of the proposal
appears to require the secretariat to obtain legal review of whether the "at
a minimum" requirement has been met when the disclosure submission indicates
custom licensing terms, 

and moreover will have the effect of withholding potentially useful
information from the community when no licensing terms are indicated by a
discloser who would otherwise indicate terms below the proposed minimum.

I considered that.  I believe we have to balance the ease of use of RFCs in
outside organizations, and freedom of disclosing exotic licensing terms in
the IETF that, in the view of the discloser, do not fulfill a world-wide
RAND commitment.  My personal feelings about that are clear.

You point out one problem, though, that I have not fully considered.
Indeed, with the sentence I suggested, it would be impossible for a
rightholder to submit admitted non-RAND terms to the community.  Personally,
I somewhat doubt to what extent that would matter in the IETF's current
climate re IPR, but I agree that more consideration is required to address
that point as that climate can change.

I think both of those would be bad outcomes.  Moreover, the current
disclosure form already has an ability to indicate:

c) Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory License to All Implementers with
Possible Royalty/Fee.

IMHO, prohibiting disclosure of licensing terms that do not fall into that
category (or b) Royalty-Free RAND or a) No License Required) deprives the
community of potentially useful information.

IMHO, it would be with adding text to the disclosure form on possible
consequences of not selecting one of those three alternatives (a-c) in the
hope of encouraging disclosures to select one of them, but I strongly oppose
imposing a restriction that has the practical effect of adding legal burdens
to the IETF and withholding useful information from the community.

Thanks,
--David

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Stephan Wenger
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:44 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Additional proposal for BCP79-bis: soft RAND

Hi,

I can imagine the immediate groan of the old-timers here, but please hear me
out and do not dismiss as impossible just because it was a difficult
discussion before.

If a patent disclosure includes licensing terms, those terms need to be at a
minimum "Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory on a world-wide basis".

The reason is facilitation of normative referencing of IETF RFCs by outside
RAND organizations, and avoiding distracting non-technical discussions in
technical meetings of those organizations.  This is important as IETF RFCs
are being referenced in many such RAND organizations; the IETF is mostly a
toolbox creator (never mind the few examples to the contrary like rtcweb),
so facilitating the reference of such RFCs by customer SDOs is important.
It also solves a real-world problem that I have witness personally at least
twice over the past 10 years or so (see below).

What I want to see is that we can avoid henceforth the discussion of
"exotic" terms that may not be at least world-wide RAND.  The proposal
somewhat restricts the freedom of choosing licensing conditions; you can
still write whatever you want, but CBCP79bis would override more restrictive
terms by providing a RAND option by policy.  That said, a rightholder would
still have the option not to include any terms, which would hopefully lead
those reading those disclosures to the correct conclusion, namely that
world-wide-RAND terms may not be available.

The vast majority of declaration practice is not going to change by this
proposed addition to BCP79.  However, situations like the two below (which I
both witnessed personally) could possibly be avoided henceforth.

Example 1: zrtp

According to ZRTP related IPR disclosures: "[.]  If the "ZRTP Disclosure
Flag" in the ZRTP specification is applicable to Your implementation, and
You knowingly fail to properly implement it in a truthful manner, and You
are informed of this fact and fail to remedy it within 90 days, then any
patent license for the specification granted to You under this License shall
terminate."

Background: (Note that I'm not a security expert, and the description may
not entirely be correct technically-but even if it were incorrect, the
procedural problem mentioned still exists).  The ZRTP disclosure flag
indicates that there are no "backdoors" in encryption vs. that there may be
backdoors (i.e. the communication is not fully secure).  It was claimed
that, in many legislations, a telco carrier needs to include backdoors to
their equipment for legal intercept, and operators need to make it available
for that use.  By implementing the ZRTP disclosure flag truthfully, as
required to keep one's license, it would be impossible to avoid "lying" to
the user about a "secure" RTP session in the sense that no one but
authorities for lawful intercept can tap into the session.  It was suggested
that this is not non-discriminatory on a world-wide basis as it effectively
disallows the deployment of equipment or services that allow for
wiretapping.  Please note that I do not take a position whether the
disclosure made is actually RAND-but I do claim that its ambiguity has led
to waste of resources by procedural and legal discussions in technical
meetings in, IRRC, ITU-T SG16 as well as 3GPP Sax (SA4 and, I believe also
the security SA-forgot the number).

The previous owner of patents related to a certain class of FEC codes
provided a patent disclosure with terms indicating that they are not able to
grant a license under RAND/reciprocity terms on a world-wide basis in
certain cases.  The rumor mill said that their choice was due to DoD
contracts which would disallow world-wide licensing as that would be support
for axis of evil states.  After acquisition, the current rightholder had
those disclosures removed and replaced with their standard RAND statement,
so I can't cite them anymore.

According to my recollection, these statements were noticed and discussed at
great lengths in 3GPP SA4.  I have heard rumors that similar discussions
were conducted in DVB.  A low level technical meeting started discussion
about the interpretation of the ETSI patent policy (which, as many of us
know here, is not exactly a document easily accessible to network
engineers).  Procedural arguments were made.  A lot of meeting hours were
wasted.  The issue went away magically at some point in time, as certain
opponents of the technology gave up their opposition.

Thanks for considering,

Stepjhan

---

From: tsg <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:05:42 -0700

Folks - as promised, let me button up my sleeve - presto... one executed 
"assignment of rights and license back agreement" for the Glassey 
GeoSpatial Patent (US6370629). No really, and yes Jorge has a copy of 
the document already too.

So look lets not argue about it, in regard to the IPR Claims filed 
pertaining to Glassey and McNeil rights under US6370629... You know the 
global geospatial controls patent -  the rights which everyone said dont 
exist... They do and magically after 12 years the paper finally surfaced!

Todd Glassey
-------------------

---

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2013 04:01:53 +0000

Hi Scott,

On 3.14.2013 13:11 , "Scott Brim" <[email-masked]> wrote:

>those lines, regardless of what the IETF says.

This is quite probably true.  But the purpose of this proposal is not to
change the litigation environment.  The purpose of the proposal is to
increase the likelihood that unhealthy debates in non-IETF SDOs that
reference RFCs can be avoided, or at least the frequency of such a debate
goes down.  If that can be done without unhealthy side effects, it would
be at least courteous, but also in the IETF's self-interest (considering
how many of our RFCs are normatively referenced by RAND-organizations), to
spend a few cycles on this.

>The IETF doesn't need to

I have already pointed out in my reply to Brian why I consider the
inclusion of this mechanism into an Informational document as suboptimal.

Stephan