Re: silly legal boilerplate, was Regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures

[Russ Housley <housley at vigilsec.com>]

>> From: "Andrew Allen" <aallen at rim.com>
>> To: <ietf at ietf.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 6:11 PM
>> Subject: Regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures
>> ...
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>
> This is just plain silly.  Or is it willful ignorance of the "Note 
Well" terms?

I recall that there was a long discussion of these notices several 
years ago, and one result was Section 5.2 in RFC 5378 (particularly 
the last sentence), which effectively "negates" the effect of these 
confidentiality legends:

 5.2.  Confidentiality Obligations

   No information or document that is subject to any requirement of
   confidentiality or any restriction on its dissemination may be
   submitted as a Contribution or otherwise considered in any part of
   the IETF Standards Process, and there must be no assumption of any
   confidentiality obligation with respect to any Contribution.  Each
   Contributor agrees that any statement in a Contribution, whether
   generated automatically or otherwise, that states or implies that the
   Contribution is confidential or subject to any privilege, can be
   disregarded for all purposes, and will be of no force or effect.