Duke University has a good "Inventor" definition - which is useful in constraining the term "contributor".

["TS Glassey" <tglassey at earthlink.net>]

Harald

I have a concern that I want to voice. That is that the to date the IPR 
processes used in the IETF lump the terms "Inventor" and "Contributor" into 
an amalgam which ignores the patent requirements... I don't think we can 
really do that, and the issue is that there is an IP work product produced 
through the IETF's process.

The problem is that both inventor's and contributors share in the proceeds 
of any patent licensing efforts from their works, and none of that is 
conveyed to the IETF as far as I can tell in the current participation 
process. That means for instance that Someone who worked in WG "L" on 
Protocol "P" would have a claim against "P's" use by anyone one would think 
under  how Inventor and Contributor Rights are generally setup.

http://olv.duke.edu/Inventors/LearningCenter/InventorsVsContributors

FWIW I think that it would be worthwhile to to discuss this some more rather 
than ignore it. The reasoning is simple. There are a mandatory requirement's 
of "Two Interoperable Instances" of any IETF Technology being produced. 
Likewise, the actual Operating Processes for the IETF are patenable as a 
global standards process through a Utility Patent, at least for a while 
longer :-)


I suppose we can continue to ignore this ... but its probably about time to 
start looking at the patent requirements for using IP from the IETF.

Todd


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