Re: IPR at IETF 54

[RJ Atkinson <rja at extremenetworks.com>]

On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 01:27 , Bill Strahm wrote:

>  I don't think the IETF can afford to keep a staff of
> lawyers working on determining the licencing statements of all of the
> standards being churned out.

	Interesting, but actually no one suggested that.

	I said that IETF's lawyer ought to create *1* template of "known to be
acceptable".  I did not say "have an lawyer review each proposal a 
company
might make", nor did anyone else.  I did not say "require companies to 
use
the known to be acceptable template" nor did anyone else.  Still having
such can help well-intentioned firms, which are trying to figure out what
*an* acceptable approach might look like, do something reasonable without
having to guess.

> That said, I don't think it would do any good anyway, lets say the IETF
> lawyer gives his Okey Dokie, then my company implements the standard 
> and a
> problem with the licencing terms comes up... Who do I go sue, the 
> IETF ???

	See above.  The situation you outline (IETF lawyer reviews everything)
was NEVER proposed on this list.

	Amateur lawyer might be amusing to some, but not to me.  Experience
is that amateur lawyering isn't terribly useful on an IETF mailing list.
Having an example template created by IETF's lawyer, whatever that might
consist of, could even help reduce amateur lawyering (though I'm not that
optimistic myself).

Ran
rja at extremenetworks.com