[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

"Money for nothing..." -

Guys - I think that the current IETF submission process is still flawed in that it requires that any and all submissions to the IETF for participation in its Standards Process become the property of the IETF formally for 'any and all uses' whether the IETF dynes to allow that material into its publication process or not and this is an issue.

Under contract law and contract must have proper consideration. If the IETF refuses to allow proper consideration/compensation for a submission, then that submission becomes a gift and the cash value of the gift immediately becomes an issue.

Also if the Intent of the submitter is to have the IETF publish the material and it doesn't, then the intent of the submission has been violated and as such the conveyance is null and void no matter what the IETF's website's boilerplate says. Contract Terms are clearly modified by the actions of the parties involved whether these contravene terms originally negotiated within the 'four corners' of the contract per the Parole Evidence Rule and the Statute of Frauds.

Which again brings us back to the value of the IP itself and that any and all work-product produced for filing with the IETF or inside the IETF's WG's or by other SDO's as part of a joint effort, has a clear and demonstrable cash value. The question is what to do about this - and whether the IETF (and the Trust) is/are properly setup as a 501(c) type entities.


Todd

----- Original Message ----- From: "todd glassey" <tglassey at earthlink.net>
To: "todd glassey" <tglassey at earthlink.net>; "Harald Alvestrand" <harald at alvestrand.no>; <ipr-wg at ietf.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:49 AM
Subject: Re: DRAFT minutes from Prague IPR WG meeting


Jorge, Harald, SOB and Bellovin - What I propose to correct these deficiencies is a simple and easily understood set of conveyance rules which I think should be something like as follows:

1) "By submitting this work and authorizing the transfer of its IP Ownership to the ISOC's IETF, the submitter warrants that they are the Legal Owner of those rights or the Legal Agent of the Owner of those rights such that they may act as the Entity controlling those IP rights. The Submitter further warrants that they assume all liability for those acts and acknowledge that they understand that the IETF's function as the recipient of those IP's is to republish that material as a formal part of its Standards and IP Disclosure Process".

[Statement one essentially says that they (the submitter) have the authority or Power Of Attorney for those works and that they can submit them. Also that they (the submitter) assume the legal responsibility for those actions and that the IETF is NOT responsible for anything regarding the submission and publishing of controlled IP's... this is more and more a very important thing to deal with IMHO]

2) "In submitting this IP to the IETF, the Submitter(s) warrant that they intend to make this IP freely available to the IETF and its Standards Processes 'for any and all reasonable uses' within that Standards Process". They also acknowledge that Research Exemptions under US Copyright Law will only apply to those instances where the reprinting of those documents is performed as part of the IETF's Standards Process and for no other reason. Any other reprinting of the IETF Documents is performed under the IETF's 'outgoing use license' and is not supported under the US Copyright Act's Section 107 (research exemptions)".

[Statement two states the Intent of the part in submitting that material - something that is also key to any conveyance of IP through the Net IMHO. It also separates the uses of the IP from those interested in reprinting the IETF's Libraries like Debian and Sun as well as those who are actually reprinting the material as part of the IETF's Standards Process itself. This addresses uses within and outside of the IETF's process properly IMHO]

[The next two statement's are cleanup to protect the IETF's use models further... ]

3) "In submitting this IP to the IETF, the submitter's license the IETF to reprint this material for any and all uses pursuant to the IETF's and the IETF's IP Trust's Operations, including all textual and code or digital program content".

[ Statement three deals with the uses by the trust as well... as reaffirming Statement two's use for the IETF's Standards Process enabling the Trust to operate as it was setup...(BTW - I still dont like the Trust's makeup but that's another issue!]

4) "In submitting this IP to the IETF the submitter's agree that the IETF's rights include any and all textual and program derivatives produced by the IETF, its RFC Editor's, its WG's, IETF Meeting's, or other SDO's external to the IETF, including but not limited to the simple reformatting of the documents to meet IETF publication and style standards or likewise to reflect vetting and other disclosure accomplished through the IETF's WG Mailing Lists and Meetings per its Note-Well Process Definitions".

[Statement four says that the derivatives in all forms are the IETF's and possibly the IETF's Trust if it wanted to assign them all to it...]

---

I think these four simple rules will allow any and all IP to be transferred into the IETF and the intent of that transfer to be included in the process.





----- Original Message ----- From: "todd glassey" <tglassey at earthlink.net>
To: "Harald Alvestrand" <harald at alvestrand.no>; <ipr-wg at ietf.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: DRAFT minutes from Prague IPR WG meeting


Good work Harald...

Some commetary on what I think are still convoluted documents, I will keep them to
BCP78 in this commentary:

0) The claim is that the process of the IETF's standardization model
respects the rights of others as defined in BCP78's section 3.1, but this is
in fact not true based on the other clauses in the document. In fact all
rights for all uses are lost for any and all derivative works including
those from Vetting and WG activities as well... So there is 'no intent or
otherwise to respect any previously controlled rights" and if there were
there would be a more rigorous process for donating IP to the IETF.

Also there is an grating issue of "that contracts without proper
consideration are void for that lack of consideration" and the contract I am
referring to is the "gift of the IP to the IETF"... This is a key flaw in
the IETF's process today since if the IETF refuses to publish the
'submission' there is no proper consideration for the submission itself. If
it is a gift then there are tax implications for the submitter and their
organization at the very least and the IETF too probably which MUST be
reviewed...

By the way - as noted this "consideration" may be the publishing of the
document as a RFC or I-D... but without the 'appropriate consideration and
its valuation' the transfer of any IP to the IETF is at best questionable.
This is simple US Contract Law and is true in every major country I know of
as well.

Again ask Jorge for a formal opinion on this if you doubt my commentary

next stop is BCP78 3.3...

1) the "Unlimited License to modify and then use without any restrictions,
code submitted to the IETF as part of a standards process" which pretty
obviously means that the submitter will then no longer control that code or
its derivatives. See section 3.3 (a) (E) of BCP78 for more confirmation of
this commentary.

This clause totally eliminates any control of that IP once it is submitted
to the IETF which means that the submitter retains no rights whatsoever
including patentability. This is not just a (c) specific statement... all
the end-user rights are transferred to the IETF ...That's right - they are
all gone per this statement.

In fact the caveat at the end of the Statement which excludes Patent Rights
is ineffective IMHO based on the statement prior to it. ANY AND ALL USES
means ANY AND ALL USES including new and derivative patents, period. Adding
this new clause as a separate clause to the end of that statement makes the
validity of the statement and its enforceability questionable IMHO...

Bluntly the IETF and anyone who relies on their publications is free to do
whatever to the code/IP submitted after that including use it for any
purpose outside of the IETF Standards Process as directly noticed in (a)
(E).

Also again, there is the issue that the IETF's submission process should
require a signature to codify this. :-)


2) Likewise BCP78's sub-section (C) of 3.3 (a) is also flawed since all
works that are vetted through the process of the IETF's standards process
are derivative works... for which the initial submitter retains NO RIGHTS
whatsoever as far as I can tell. Those efforts belong collectively to the
Sponsors and the WG Members who do that vetting and are assigned by NOTEWELL
and Submission Rules to the IETF.

3) The Derivative Rights permissions under section 5.2 of BCP78 actually
prevent any vetting or republishing of the work either by the IETF/ISOC or
its RFC Editor, or by the WG itself. In fact these stop the standards
process dead in its tracks since NO Derivative Works of any type can be made
from submissions tagged as such including those defined in 3.3 (a) (E)...

4) Under the BCP78 Copyright Statement there is a clause that says:

     This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
     contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
     retain all their rights."

Unfortunately the conflicting statements of 3.3 (a) (A), (B), and (E) and
those elsewhere make this (c) statement invalid IMHO. In submitting any
materials for publication the individuals lose all of their rights and so
this statement is void and unenforceable as far as I can tell.

Again - dont take my word for it, ask Jorge.

Todd
----- Original Message ----- From: "Harald Alvestrand" <harald at alvestrand.no>
To: <ipr-wg at ietf.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:48 AM
Subject: DRAFT minutes from Prague IPR WG meeting


Thanks to Scott Bradner for compiling these minutes.

I have inserted various points from the slides; if you were present (in
person or via audio/jabber), please send any comment you have to the
minutes as soon as you can.

                    Harald

Date: March

I - agenda bashing: no changes

II - outgoing rights draft
  anyone wish to raise issues before going to IESG
  Simon (on Jabber) - I sent in a review
  Harald: who thinks its ready for iesg - no response
  Brian - ok but should be reviewed on mailing list
  no objections in the room to send to IESG but Harald will take
question to list

III - matching issues to resolutions
Harald reviewed issues from issues list and the resolutions
1166 Quotations from RFCs and I-Ds
Resolution: Permitted
1167 Excerpt labeling
Resolution: SHOULD label, format as appropriate
1168 non-code excerpts
Resolution: Permitted
1169 Modified excerpts
Resolution: Permitted for code, not permitted for non-code
1175 How can code be distinguished from non-code?
Resolution: List of types of content + a marker mechanism â Trust maintains
1199 What license should the IETF grant to third parties on Contributions?
Resolution: Unmodified excerpts for non-code, excerpt & modify for code
1212 Copyright statements in I-Ds and RFCs: Meaning?
Resolution: Basically meaningless in I-Ds, relevant for RFCs
1237 Should incoming rights be published as 3978 delta or replacement?
Resolution: Replacement
1238 Should secretariat ask for IPR clarification from IPR holder on 3rd
party IPR
disclosures
Resolution: Yes. draft-narten-ipr-3979-3rd-party-fix approved in January.
1239 Understanding intent of participants
Resolution: None needed.
1400 Permission to modify code: Unlimited or restrictable
Resolution: Unlimited
no argument that these issues should be closed
Harald reviewed issues that have not been resolved
1246 Incoming rights: How much should be said about outgoing rights?
Not resolved, punted to next agenda item
1273 How do we usefully define "excerpt"?
San Diego: Somebody elseâs problem (closed)
1282 Should multiple copyright statements be permitted in I-Ds and RFCs?
Suggestion: none needed for I-D, RFC Editor matter for RFCs
Need the ability to do âjointâ for joint publication. Need to avoid lots of
conflicting ones.
1337 Notices and Rights Required in RFC Editor Contributions
Proposal: RFC Editorâs problem (+IAB) â not the WGâs issue.
1338 Notices "normally placed at the endâ (raised in conjunction with nits
checker)
Word ânormallyâ was chosen to be non-nonrmative. Donât check.
1339 Does RFC 3978 3.3.a.(E) grant third parties rights to modify source
Jorge believes that license permits extraction & bugfixing.

close - what is an excerpt
multiple copyrights statements in ID - may need for other SDO
document
rfc ed specific text in incoming doc - consensus: should
be removed
others as on slide

IV - incoming draft
  add phrase that says what is normative and what is not
boilerplate - should it be there?
Scott Bradner - yes
Brian Carpenter - changes are painful but 1st set of
boilerplate important
Scott Bradner - do not need most of boilerplate - need
1st pp & exp date
Harald - conclusion: short boilerplate - with trust ok to change
John Klensin - should be in RFC and unchangeable or just
a pointer
Scott Bradner - how about pointer with text that says
text for start of ID that summaries responsibilities
of authors in light of bcp 79
Harald - how many support pointing to doc maintained by trust?
consensus in favor
  Harald -incoming doc structure:
abstract
defs
intro & descriptions
legal stuff

John Klensin - need to have incoming stable before last calling outgoing
Harald - do WGLC on outgoing but say that doc will not go to
IESG until incoming done to cover what -outgoing needs
Ted Hardie (via Jabber) - not do IETF Last Call until incoming
document finished working group last call

meeting concluded






_______________________________________________
Ipr-wg mailing list
Ipr-wg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg


_______________________________________________
Ipr-wg mailing list
Ipr-wg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg




_______________________________________________
Ipr-wg mailing list
Ipr-wg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg