Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary

[Marshall Eubanks <tme at multicasttech.com>]

Dear John;

From your email :

On Dec 17, 2008, at 12:16 PM, John C Klensin wrote:

> 	(iii) Rewrite the document to remove any copyright
> 	dependencies on text whose status is uncertain or for
> 	which rights transfers are significantly difficult.
> 	

This is a dangerous solution, and may not be one at all.

My mantra on these issues is : Engineers should not try and be lawyers.
(And, lawyers should not try and be engineers.) I try to follow it  
personally, as I
am definitely not a lawyer (and, of course, I am not referring to  
anyone who is cross-trained).

But I do know this - merely rewriting a document is not necessarily  
enough to remove copyright
dependancies. J.K. Rowling, for example, won a suit against someone  
who wrote a Lexicon of
her work :

<http://www.fictionaddiction.net/Publishing-Industry-News/rowling-wins-copyright-infringement-lawsuit.html 
>

If this actually became an issue, it would be decided by a court, and  
I would not regard either myself or the vast
majority of IETF contributors as competent to judge how a court would  
react to any given rewriting of an RFC
if it went to trial.

Regards
Marshall


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