Re: recourse if our rules are violated?

[Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org>]

"Joel M. Halpern" <joel at stevecrocker.com> writes:

> If the patent becomes known after publication as an RFC, then we can
> not unpublish the RFC.  We publish the IPR disclosure.  The question
> is whether, assuming the RFC is standards track, we need to do
> anything.  It seems to me that this can not be dealt with by a rule,
> or even an ION.  The correct response is going to depend upon a lot of
> circumsttances, and the WG may not even exist anymore to be asked.

What is possible, though, is to build consensus around moving the
patented technology off the standards track.  It should be possible to
do so.

I believe this approach can be discussed in more detail: some WGs
(e.g., DNSEXT) have consensus that they aren't interested in patented
technology for one of their problems.  If a patent came up after RFC
publication, or even after the DNSEXT WG is closed, having some
guidelines to go on how to address the situation may be useful.  Alas,
because the process is so slow, I suspect most people will not bother
doing this work, and just route around the RFC by inventing new
solutions without patent problems.  If this is true, I believe it
suggests a process failure regarding handling situations after a RFC
has been published.

> John raised the question of a known bad faith participant.  That seems
> a dangerous place to go.  Without an actual court ruling, I can not
> see how we could reasonably take action on a supposition of bad faith.
> (That does not mean that folks can not be made aware of what happened,
> and that such may not influence reactions to other proposals from that
> source.  But no official sanction seems practical.)

I agree.  Make the relevant information about who is doing what, and
things generally tend to sort themselves out in the long run.

/Simon

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