Subject: What happen if IPR is not disclosured before RFC ?

From: 박수홍 <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:47:51 +0000 (GMT)

I did bring up this issue last year but no clear conclusion yet. I know
it's very hard to make a perfect answer on that but just want to open up
this thread for further debate. I said IETF should do a Antitrust guideline,
and Brian did agree with this approach at that time. Otherwise, who cares if
relevant IPRs are not disclosured prior to publishing RFC ?

It is beyond scope of IETF and company has to negitiate each other later
if something happen ?

Daniel Park

co-chair, 16ng working group

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 23:12:41 -0600

On Mar 4, 2008, at 9:47 AM, 박수홍 wrote:

> I did bring up this issue last year but no clear conclusion yet. I  
> know it's very hard to make a perfect answer on that but just want  
> to open up this thread for further debate. I said IETF should do a  
> Antitrust guideline, and Brian did agree with this approach at that  
> time. Otherwise, who cares if relevant IPRs are not disclosured  
> prior to publishing RFC ?
>
> It is beyond scope of IETF and company has to negitiate each other  
> later if something happen ?
>
>

Speaking informally,  it seems that one of the things served by the  
IETF disclosure policy is to facilitate later legal if a conflict  
develops.

This principle was rather famously brought forth in the Rambus v.  
Infineon case, where it was claimed that a contributor to the  
specification had IPR on that specification that should have been  
disclosed by the specification's standards body's rules. Since it was  
apparently not disclosed until late in the process, litigation  
(including criminal charges for fraud) ensued. I believe the courts  
initially held against RAMBUS, only to overturn the decision later on  
based on weaknesses in JEDECs disclosure policy.  Standards bodies  
everywhere have been looking at their disclosure policies ever since.

See:

http://www.finnegan.com/publications/news-popup.cfm?id=724&type=article

--
Dean