Hi Thomas,
Hmm. Why did you not then file a 3rd party IPR disclosure?That was and still is the common industry practice in any vendor for any novel work which is going to be publicly presented. AFAIK you can safely assume that vast majority of IETF drafts have patents filed behind. The fact that some lawyers did not disclosed it on time is regrettable, but should not be a point of any discussion in IDR WG.The obligation is not on lawyers to disclose, it is on IETF _participants_ (called "Contributers in RFC 3979). This is absolutelyclear in RFC 3979.
RFC3979 date is 2005. For this particular draft we are talking about draft preparation which tool place in 2002/2003.
Having the draft publishing and IPR disclosures submission taking totally independent paths as it is today is just a clear receipt for more cases like this one to happen.Sorry, I don't buy this. The IETF has had many discussions over many years about how to ensure that participants know their obligations w.r.t. IPR. The processes/rules we have adopted are designed toprotect the IETF and _all_ of its participants.
I was not trying to say that adopted processes/rules are bad. I was just gently trying to suggest how to make it more effective in practice.
Cheers, R.