A new IETF working group has been proposed in the General Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet.
The following Description was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only: Intellectual Property Rights (ipr) ------------------------------ Current Status: Proposed Working Group Description of Working Group: The IETF and the Internet have greatly benefited from the free exchange of ideas and technology. For many years the IETF normal behavior was to standardize only unencumbered technology. While the "Tao" of the IETF is still strongly oriented toward unencumbered technology, we can and do make use of technology that has various encumbrances. One of the goals of RFC2026 "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3" was to make it easier for the IETF to make use of encumbered technology when it made sense to do so. The IETF IPR policy, as embedded in RFC 2026 section 10, has proven fairly successful. At the same time, a perceived lack of textual clarity on some issues have made necessary the publication of clarifications such as the "note well" statement issued in every registration package, the I-D boilerplate rules, and a huge number of discussions on specific IPR-related issues. This working group is chartered with updating and clarifying section 10 of BCP 9, RFC 2026, which deals with intellectual property rights, including, but not necessarily limited to, patent rights and copyrights. This working group will provide three documents: o A BCP document, updating RFC 2026, which states the IETF IPR policy on rights relevant to the document publication process, such as copyright issues and trademark issues. o A BCP document, updating RFC 2026, which states the IETF IPR policy on rights relevant to the use of IETF-standardized technology, such as patent-related claims o An Informational document, which describes useful rules of thumb for working group chairs and working group members when working on IPR issues, as well as describing specific cases of IPR issues that have been successfully worked out in the IETF process, and providing references to specific examples of licensing statements and copyright provisions that have proved useful or worrisome. In other words, we plan to document the running code of our process. The working group will attempt to work in three phases: 1. Document existing IPR practice in the IETF 2. Identify issues with current IPR practice that need to be addressed 3. Modify the documents produced in step 1 to reflect the outcome of the discussion of items identified in step 2. If there consensus of the working group for a different IPR policy than the one described in RFC 2026, the working group will seek to amend its charter to make it clear that it is changing the status quo. The working group will have a design team to assist with document drafting and review. As always, design team drafts have no special status, and are subject to amendment, ratification, and/or replacement by the working group.
