Re: [Idr] IPR related to the flow-spec I-D

[John Leslie <john at jlc.net>]

> From: Ross Callon <rcallon at juniper.net>
>> From: Thomas Narten <narten at us.ibm.com>
>> 
>> IIRC, the December disclosure only listed a single patent application.
>> The revised one lists one patent (issued) plus 5 patent applications
>> (no information available AFAICT). So the disclosure has been expanded to
>> include significantly (?) more possible IPR compared with the original
>> disclosure.

   (It is a significant annoyance to those of us without "free" access to
patent applications not published by the US patent office to be left
guessing what IPR claims may be being disclosed.)

> The additional applications in the more recent Juniper disclosure are
> patents where the inventors have not been involved in the IDR working
> group, and are not authors of the flow spec document.

   I am certainly happy to take Ross's word for this -- but additional
possible (unknown) IPR claims still leave me wondering...

> Therefore the connection between the applications and the IDR document
> was not noticed until very recently (there is no requirement that all
> IETF participants pay attention to every document in every IETF working
> group just in case they happen to have IPR on it).

   Indeed -- I hope nobody is asking to add such a requirement.

> The text that you refer to talks about "contributors". It is my
> impression however that if someone notices IPR that applies to an IETF
> document then they are supposed to disclose it when the connection is
> discovered, even if neither the inventors nor the person noticing the
> connection are contributors to the document in question.

   That is the way I read it, also.

   As far as the additional patent applications being listed, I fear
we have to accept this: the requirement of "contributors" to disclose
IPR claims they become aware of is unambiguous, while their ability
to disclose the particulars of those claims is often severely limited
by company policy.

   In this particular case, we're faced with a late disclosure (the
December one, not the revision), and serious reason to believe that
a "contributor" was aware of IPR claims but trusted Juniper lawyers to
handle the disclosure. Lawyers habitually put things off as long as
possible; and that's the behavior we'd like to change.

   We have two "sticks" we might apply:

1) asking for actual "royalty-free" terms, not Mutually-Assured-
   Destruction terms, based upon either the late filing or the
   vagueness of the claims disclosed;

2) refusing to proceed until the actual claims in all disclosed patent
   applications are available to all WG participants.

   Under the circumstances, I think either of these would be reasonable;
though I could probably live with an assurance that the Juniper lawyers
are willing to change their ways and that Juniper "contributors" will
not in the future tolerate lenghty delays by Juniper lawyers.

--
John Leslie <john at jlc.net>