RE: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
Ted Ts'o wrote: > So you've done the equivalent of submit Windows source code and assume > that it can be ported to a Unix system "left as an exercise to the > reader" care to give a detailed suggestion about *how* it could > be revised to work with the IETF's more open procedures, and still be > useful in terms of meeting your stated goals? I've made no such assumptions. I've submitted a couple of process documents from W3C that can be modified easily to fit the IETF model. I thought John and Steven would be satisfied with a rough draft. Sort of like Windows might provide a model for a Linux open source program, without the actual code being yet written. :-) Now that I've submitted this draft, I refuse to be told it isn't a draft, although I admit it isn't in the proper format. Any process bigots want to comment on that flaw tonight too? I specifically said that the W3C Patent and Standards Working Group (PSIG) charter (http://www.w3.org/2004/pp/psig/) and *section 7* of the W3C Patent Policy (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/) would be models for an IETF IPR Advisory Board. Neither of those specific document sections implies anything mandatory about RAND or royalty-free or any other of the political patent battles that divide us. They are merely open process descriptions, just like a draft here ought to be. /Larry > -Original Message- > From: Theodore Tso [mailto:ty...@mit.edu] > Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 6:25 PM > To: Lawrence Rosen > Cc: ietf@ietf.org > Subject: Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board > > On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 05:40:46PM -0800, Lawrence Rosen wrote: > > Steven Bellovin wrote: > > > All that said, the above is my strawman that I've just torched. This > > > is why we need a draft -- until we have one, we won't know if it's a > > > plausible, useful idea or not. In fact, a metadraft -- one that > simply > > > set out the questions that a concrete proposal should address -- would > > > be a worthwhile contribution in its own regard. > > > > In honor of open source, I'm glad to submit someone else's work as my > first > > draft: http://www.w3.org/2004/pp/psig/. > > > > This is an effective working model. I'm sure it would have to be revised > to > > fit IETF's more democratic operations. > > This model works if you have closed working groups and no one is > allowed to participate without first going through a huge amount of > bureaucratic rigamarole, and where someone can't even poke their head > into a meeting room without being explicitly invited by the chair. It > doesn't work at all in an IETF model which is much more open. > > So you've done the equivalent of submit Windows source code and assume > that it can be ported to a Unix system "left as an exercise to the > reader" care to give a detailed suggestion about *how* it could > be revised to work with the IETF's more open procedures, and still be > useful in terms of meeting your stated goals? > > - Ted ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
> From: "Lawrence Rosen" > This is an effective working model. I'm sure it would have to be > revised to fit IETF's more democratic operations. That's not the only change it would need: W3C will not approve a Recommendation if it is aware that Essential Claims exist which are not available on Royalty-Free terms. That contradicts an IETF policy position which I would suggest is unlikely to change (not that I personally have a strong preference for one alternative or the other, mind). Noel ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
Steven Bellovin wrote: > All that said, the above is my strawman that I've just torched. This > is why we need a draft -- until we have one, we won't know if it's a > plausible, useful idea or not. In fact, a metadraft -- one that simply > set out the questions that a concrete proposal should address -- would > be a worthwhile contribution in its own regard. In honor of open source, I'm glad to submit someone else's work as my first draft: http://www.w3.org/2004/pp/psig/. This is an effective working model. I'm sure it would have to be revised to fit IETF's more democratic operations. For a detailed description, see http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/. In particular see section 7. [This is a document I helped a little bit to write, several years ago.] Kudos to our friends in W3C for doing this well. /Larry Lawrence Rosen Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243 Skype: LawrenceRosen ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
> From: "Steven M. Bellovin" > But I'm not even certain of the value of the answer -- certainly, the > large corporations are not going to take this advisory board's word for > it; they'll do their own analysis Sure, but as I pointed out to Tom Narten here: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg55745.html those IETFers not associated with a large company might find the analysis produced by such a board useful. It might also be useful to us generally, in deciding how serious an encumbrance a patent, or application, might be - because that's an essential element in the bottom line question for the IETF about such encumbrances, which is 'do the benefits of the protocol outweigh the costs of the encumbrance'. And, as I pointed out in that message, we certainly could use some expert advice in making those decisions. Hey, it's just _advice_ they would be generating - people here would be free to take it, or ignore it. > Then, of course, there's the whole question of liability. Can the IETF > and/or ISOC afford the liability insurance for such a board? Well, would it need to? I assume the lawyers on the board could craft adequate language limiting the expectations people should apply to any analysis (i.e. telling people that this advice is worth what people are paying for it - nothing :-), etc. But this is one more question any I-D proposing such an advisory board would have to answer. > doing such an analysis is difficult and time-consuming. > ... > Finally, where are we going to get the people? ... > willing to spend (presumably uncompensated) time doing this? Absolutely - and that's one question any such proposal would have to address. > Could we get enough competent people who know enough about enough > different protocols *and* about patent law I don't think you'd expect to get that in one person. The board would have to have a mix of legal people and technical people, who work together - just as in real patent cases, you always have a mixture of attorneys and experts (some of whom will be expert witnesses) on the team. > This is why we need a draft -- until we have one, we won't know if it's > a plausible, useful idea or not. In fact, a metadraft -- one that > simply set out the questions that a concrete proposal should address -- > would be a worthwhile contribution in its own regard. Indeed - although it could usefully include quick, rough, draft first-pass answers to the questions John posed: >> what such a board's charter is >> how its members are selected and what their qualifications would be >> where its operations fit into the IETF process >> what the appeal process will be for people unhappy with its conclusions >> what if any budget it would need >> all the other details needed to create and run it which actually are a really good list of question that need to be answered. (My concern about his message was more 'would such a thing get a serious hearing', not the list of issues.) Noel ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:42:17 -0500 (EST)
j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote:
> > From: John Levine
>
> > We're looking forward to the draft
>
> I hope you're only partially ironic here. If there's no chance
> whatsoever of such a draft going anywhere, I'd hate to see people, in
> good faith, put in effort in creating one if it's 100.000% drop-dead
> guaranteed to be a waste of time.
>
I think the right advisory board would be a good idea, but I'm not
optimistic that we'd get one.
There's a line from Zelazny's "Lord of Light" that this reminds me of.
Approximately (I don't have the book handy) "he asked the storm. The
storm never lies... and it always says No!". A board composed solely
of, say, FSF afficiaonados would be useless, because the FSF's position
on patents isn't nuanced; I'd therefore have trouble believing that
their analyses were objective. ("Not objective" isn't a value judgment
or an assertion about the correctness of any particular analysis.)
A more important question is what the board should do. Analyze a
patent and its claims, and make statements about validity? Leaving out
the question of the value of such an activity, when a definitive answer
can only come from a court, doing such an analysis is difficult and
time-consuming. But I'm not even certain of the value of the answer --
certainly, the large corporations are not going to take this advisory
board's word for it; they'll do their own analysis, where the output of
the board would simply be more input. And their motives may be
different. Consider the case of three large companies, A, B, and C. A
asserts that their patent covers some protocol. B, which has a
cross-licensing agreement with A, wants it to be valid, because that
will keep C (which has no such agreement) and assorted start-ups out of
the market.
Infringement or non-infringement is a somewhat easier call, though the
answer there may depend on implementation choices.
Then, of course, there's the whole question of liability. Can the IETF
and/or ISOC afford the liability insurance for such a board?
Finally, where are we going to get the people? It's hard enough to get
sufficient security expertise, and there we don't even have to cross a
disciplinary boundary and bring in lawyers. Could we get enough
competent people who know enough about enough different protocols *and*
about patent law, and are willing to spend (presumably uncompensated)
time doing this? I have my doubts.
All that said, the above is my strawman that I've just torched. This
is why we need a draft -- until we have one, we won't know if it's a
plausible, useful idea or not. In fact, a metadraft -- one that simply
set out the questions that a concrete proposal should address -- would
be a worthwhile contribution in its own regard.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: John Levine > > > We're looking forward to the draft > > I hope you're only partially ironic here. If there's no chance whatsoever of > such a draft going anywhere, I'd hate to see people, in good faith, put in > effort in creating one if it's 100.000% drop-dead guaranteed to be a waste of > time. There are some people whose time *is* worth wasting:-) S. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
> From: John Levine > We're looking forward to the draft I hope you're only partially ironic here. If there's no chance whatsoever of such a draft going anywhere, I'd hate to see people, in good faith, put in effort in creating one if it's 100.000% drop-dead guaranteed to be a waste of time. Noel ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
>It seems to me that people arguing to establish an IPR Advisory Board >have the better argument. Well, OK. We're looking forward to the draft describing what such a board's charter is, how its members are selected and what their qualifications would be, where its operations fit into the IETF process, what the appeal process will be for people unhappy with its conclusions, what if any budget it would need, and all the other details needed to create and run it. R's, John ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Previous consensus on not changing patent policy (Re: References to Redphone's "patent")
John Levine wrote: But are the 1,000 or so emails in recent days from the FSF campaign not a loud enough hum to recognize that our IPR policy is out of tune? Are you really saying that all it takes is a mob motivated by an misleading screed to make the IETF change direction? Yes - exactly that. >From the sample of the FSF letters I read, many of the people writing didn't know the difference between Redphone and Red Hat, and if as many as two of them had even looked at the draft or IPR disclosure in question, it'd be a lot. The FSF's absolutist position on patents was set in stone 20 years ago. I don't see why we should be impressed if they occasionally throw a handful of pebbles at us. R's, John ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: How we got here, RE: References to Redphone's "patent"
> "PHB" == Hallam-Baker, Phillip writes: PHB> The proposal that I made then was that when a working group is PHB> started, it specify the IPR criteria under which it is PHB> chartered. In some cases it makes perfect sense to charter a PHB> group that will be using encumbered technology. In other cases PHB> the entire purpose of the group requires that any technology be PHB> open and unencumbered. I didn't know you had proposed this. It's brilliant. It means that we have decided things up-front. +1 ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
Hi, I am a new speaker on the "IETF airwaves," but I felt I could not resist the urge to comment. Although I am head of IP at VMware, I can only speak for myself and not for the company. It seems to me that people arguing to establish an IPR Advisory Board have the better argument. I understand that lawyers are loath to opine on issues because they are afraid their opinions might be relied upon, and, in this litigious society, that might somehow result in liability to themselves. Despite that, however, there are ways of providing information that can be useful. In addition, there are economies to be had by everyone's putting their resources together. I have read e-mails from people who advocate that IETF ought not to get involved and, instead, ought to let "users" fend for themselves. These people apparently have resources to deal with all such issues unilaterally. However, in my opinion, even such people are wasting funds for their companies by going it alone on each issue. My experience is that, especially in these financially troubling times, wise use of resources is always a good thing to do. In addition to spreading the expense, there is an additional benefit of taping into the technical resources of many, and using the "eyes of many" to improve the reliability of technical and legal analyses much in the way open source improves software. If nothing else, information provided by such analyses provides a basis for understanding a potential problem. Benefit results, for example, since identifying a bogus problem, enables development to progress unimpeded. Similarly, by identifying a real problem, development may, if people wish, be directed to ways around the problem. It seems to me that a standards group should not merely be a forum to develop a standard, but that it should provide a standard that can be used commercially by at least the group that helped to develop it. That means developing a standard which will not exclude those not having sufficient resources to perform their own IP analysis (and presumably not shared for legal reasons). Otherwise, why work to develop a standard that only the "well heeled" can use confidently. Mike Einschlag -Original Message- From: Lawrence Rosen [mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com] Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 4:50 PM To: ietf@ietf.org Subject: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board Paul Hoffman wants: > In this case, "worked-out" means a document > that describes the the current solution, the advantages and disadvantages > of it, a proposal for a new solution, and a transition plan. Paul, I'm not sure what more you're asking for at this stage. This list is lively with suggestions, convincing me that IPR issues continue to dominate the IETF airwaves. A "worked-out" document would be premature in this context. One suggestion, now a specific topic on this list if you care to respond directly, is for the creation of an IETF IPR Advisory Board to help people everywhere--including thousands of disaffected FSF campaigners--to understand why certain patents (including the Redphone "patent") are not worth worrying about. The charter would be: "Answer IPR questions that are posed by other IETF working groups." The quality of its answers, as with any IETF working group, will be at least partly a function of the quality of its participants. This suggestion is perhaps the most important currently before us, because an IETF IPR Advisory Board will be able to stop FSF campaigns and other distractions before they start with facts instead of fiction. What would YOU suggest for a charter for such an Advisory Board to keep it from crossing into any forbidden areas? Or is it every man and woman for themselves in these patent-infested waters? /Larry Lawrence Rosen Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243 Skype: LawrenceRosen > -Original Message- > From: Paul Hoffman [mailto:paul.hoff...@vpnc.org] > Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 3:20 PM > To: lro...@rosenlaw.com; ietf@ietf.org > Subject: RE: Previous consensus on not changing patent policy (Re: > References to Redphone's "patent") > > At 2:11 PM -0800 2/16/09, Lawrence Rosen wrote: > >Let's forget the past; I acknowledge we lost that argument then among > those > >few who bothered to hum. > > Many of us have heard this in various technical working groups when people > who didn't get their way come back later. Such reconsiderations, > particularly on topics of a non-protocol nature, are rarely embraced. We > are humans with limited time and energy and focus. > > >But are the 1,000 or so emails in recent days from the FSF campaign not a > >loud enough hum to recognize that our IPR policy is out of tune? > > No, it is a statement that a group of people who are not active in the > IETF want us to spend our time and effort to fix a problem they feel that > they have. >
Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
Michael Dillon wrote: Some of the time, [...] the IETF should ask the FSF to collect their thoughts and write an Internet draft that explains why the proposed plan of action is bad, and why the IETF should take some other plan of action. That draft can then go to the WG and get resolved before a new protocol ever reaches RFC status. Under the rule that "the IETF will make no determination about the validity of any particular IPR claim" (BCP79), the WG chair(s) would simply object to discussions about such a draft (apparently no matter who authored the draft, but sometimes some IETF participants are more equal than others, so I'm not 100% sure). If you want to change this rule, e.g. "the IETF may collect evidence useful to the determination of a particular IPR claim validity and/or scope" then you were challenged to come up with a detailed proposal. My point in this discussion was that the IETF processes are increasingly inefficient because *at the participant level*, under the current rules, insufficient investigation and analyses are being made. But that's an incomplete diagnostic of the current situation, and I have no solution to propose. -- - Thierry Moreau CONNOTECH Experts-conseils inc. 9130 Place de Montgolfier Montreal, Qc Canada H2M 2A1 Tel.: (514)385-5691 Fax: (514)385-5900 web site: http://www.connotech.com e-mail: thierry.mor...@connotech.com ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Settlement proposal - Re: Previous consensus on not changing patent policy
Paul Hoffman wrote: At 2:11 PM -0800 2/16/09, Lawrence Rosen wrote: Let's forget the past; I acknowledge we lost that argument then among those few who bothered to hum. Many of us have heard this in various technical working groups when people who didn't get their way come back later. Such reconsiderations, particularly on topics of a non-protocol nature, are rarely embraced. We are humans with limited time and energy and focus. But are the 1,000 or so emails in recent days from the FSF campaign not a loud enough hum to recognize that our IPR policy is out of tune? No, it is a statement that a group of people who are not active in the IETF want us to spend our time and effort to fix a problem they feel that they have. This is not the first such open source campaign either. IETF needs a more sturdy process to deal with IPR issues. Please consider the suggestions now on the table. Where? I see no Internet Draft, nor any significant group of people who have said they are willing to work on the problem. Seriously, if this is a significant issue for this motivated group of people, they can do some research and write one (or probably more) Internet Drafts. The IETF has never been swayed by blitzes of a mailing list asking for us to do someone else's technical work; we should not be swayed by similar blitzes asking us to do their policy work. We are, however, amazingly (and sometime painfully) open to discussing worked-out solutions of either a technical or policy nature. In this case, "worked-out" means a document that describes the the current solution, the advantages and disadvantages of it, a proposal for a new solution, and a transition plan. You mean solutions which amuse or are acceptable to the parties directly managing the IETF today, rather than to the IETF's victims, err members. --Paul Hoffman, Director --VPN Consortium The IETF needs a licensing irrelevant model for creating interoperability standards for networking models of all types. If fact if people want to create a IETF standard why should anyone here want to stop them except to prevent that protocol from coming to use, which means that the IETF has become a political entity serving to prevent some entities from being able to productize their efforts meaning that the actions of the IETF itself become adversarial to anyone outside of those that the Standards Trolls want to allow through the IETF. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf Settlement proposal - ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
At 3:14 PM + 2/17/09, Michael Dillon wrote: > > >> >One suggestion, now a specific topic on this list if you care to respond >> >directly, is for the creation of an IETF IPR Advisory Board to help people >> >everywhere--including thousands of disaffected FSF campaigners--to >> >understand why certain patents (including the Redphone "patent") are not >> >worth worrying about. > >> - If there are "thousands of disaffected FSF campaigners", this should be >> the FSF IPR Advisory Board. You have yet to explain why the aggrieved party >> is not willing to do the work to make themselves happy. > >There is the germ of a good idea here. History has shown that the FSF >is very concerned >with how the IETF standardisation process deals with patent issues. >This is a reasonable >concern given the FSF's raison d'etre. > >Therefore, why not proactively consult the FSF on any standards track >document that >makes use of patented material? Because we don't know which of them do. For instance, the document that kicked off the message barrage that preceded thread does not, as far as anyone knows, "make use of patented material". One company that has a patent *application* that they think (and probably hope) will get granted says that they think (and probably hope) applies to the protocol has informed the IETF of that fact. Their patent might not be granted. It might be granted, but limited in a way that clearly does not apply to the protocol. It might be granted and two intelligent people looking at the patent and the protocol could disagree about where it applies. > Proactively drive the dialogue by >getting the FSF >involved at an early stage, and by providing a separate mailing list >(ietf-comments) >for discussing the IPR issues. Why single out the FSF? Patent-encumbered protocols affect commercial vendors to the same extent as they affect FSF members (and possibly moreso). >In addition, more dialogue with FSF members should prove to be useful in >resolving some of the open questions about IPR, copyrights, licencing and >so on. This is the opposite of what Larry wanted: he wanted lawyers to give advice. You are wanting non-lawyers to give legal advice. We already have an abundance of the latter. --Paul Hoffman, Director --VPN Consortium ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Proposal to create IETF IPR Advisory Board
> > >One suggestion, now a specific topic on this list if you care to respond > >directly, is for the creation of an IETF IPR Advisory Board to help people > >everywhere--including thousands of disaffected FSF campaigners--to > >understand why certain patents (including the Redphone "patent") are not > >worth worrying about. > - If there are "thousands of disaffected FSF campaigners", this should be the > FSF IPR Advisory Board. You have yet to explain why the aggrieved party is > not willing to do the work to make themselves happy. There is the germ of a good idea here. History has shown that the FSF is very concerned with how the IETF standardisation process deals with patent issues. This is a reasonable concern given the FSF's raison d'etre. Therefore, why not proactively consult the FSF on any standards track document that makes use of patented material? Proactively drive the dialogue by getting the FSF involved at an early stage, and by providing a separate mailing list (ietf-comments) for discussing the IPR issues. Over time, the FSF folks will better understand how the IETF deals with IPR and will see that there is rarely the possibility of a serious problem. Some of the time, an issue won't be resolvable in a brief email discussion and in that case the IETF should ask the FSF to collect their thoughts and write an Internet draft that explains why the proposed plan of action is bad, and why the IETF should take some other plan of action. That draft can then go to the WG and get resolved before a new protocol ever reaches RFC status. If we do this, then there are unlikely to be flurries of activity during last-call. In addition, more dialogue with FSF members should prove to be useful in resolving some of the open questions about IPR, copyrights, licencing and so on. --Michael Dillon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
