Previous consensus on not changing patent policy (Re: References to Redphone's "patent")

[Harald Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no>]

Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> Chuck Powers wrote:
>   
> > +1
> >
> > That is a legal quagmire that the IETF (like all good standards
> > development groups) must avoid.
> >     
>
> Chuck is not alone in saying that, as you have just seen.
>
> These are the very people who refused to add "patent policy" to the charter
> of the previous IPR WG, and who controlled "consensus" on that point last
> time.
To be precise: "Last time" was at the San Francisco IETF meeting, March 
16-22 2003, and I was the one "controlling consensus".

The minutes (at http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/03mar/132.htm ) show 
this conclusion, after much discussion:

> 1. do you wish this group to recharter to cdhange the IETF's IPR policy
>     hum for (some)
>     hom anti (more)
>    fairly clear consensus against rechartering.  anyone disagree?
>
> harald: will verified on mailing list, will lead to some debate.  if
> consensus is reached against rechartering... the IETF will not consider
> proposals to create or reactivate IPR wg before people with
> compelling arg to do so.  those should be different than what
> prevented so far.
Despite the abysmal spelling quality, it was pretty clear at the time 
that the arguments presented were not compelling. I haven't seen 
significant new arguments in the meantime; that doesn't mean they don't 
exist, just that I haven't seen them.

                 Harald