Network Working Group J. M. Halpern, Ed. Internet-Draft Ericsson Intended status: Best Current Practice B. Biddle Expires: 6 May 2022 Biddle Law PC J. Daley IETF Administration LLC 2 November 2021 Antitrust Guidelines for IETF Particiants draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust-01 Abstract This document provides guidance for IETF participants on compliance with antitrust laws and how to reduce antitrust risks in connection with IETF activities. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on 6 May 2022. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License. Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 1] Internet-Draft IETF Antitrust Guidelines November 2021 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. Legal Compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4. Existing BCPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5. Additional Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5.1. Adoption and implementation of standards . . . . . . . . 3 5.2. Exchange of competitive information . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5.3. Market Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5.4. Dominant market position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6. Escalation of antitrust-related concerns . . . . . . . . . . 5 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 9. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1. Introduction Standards development frequently requires collaboration between competitors. Cooperation among competitors can spark concerns about antitrust law or competition law violations (antitrust law and competition law are used here synonymously). Certain actions taken by a company that holds a dominant market position can similarly spark concerns about competition law violations. This document provides guidance for IETF participants about how to reduce antitrust risks in connection with IETF activities. 2. Terminology The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here. 3. Legal Compliance The IETF does not provide legal advice to participants, and instead encourages participants to obtain independent legal advice as needed. This document does not contain legal advice. All IETF participants must behave lawfully when engaged in IETF activities, including by following applicable antitrust laws. Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 2] Internet-Draft IETF Antitrust Guidelines November 2021 4. Existing BCPs Compliance with the BCPs that document the established rules and norms of the IETF facilitates compliance with antitrust law, as the IETF structure and processes are intended to mitigate antitrust risks. As a reminder, participants are already required to comply with the following policies documented in the BCPs: * The Internet Standards Process as described in BCP 9 [BCP9], which is designed to "provide a fair, open, and objective basis for developing, evaluating, and adopting Internet Standards," and provides robust procedural rules, including an appeals process. * The Working Group Guidelines and Procedures described in BCP 25 [BCP25], which emphasize requirements for "open and fair participation and for thorough consideration of technical alternatives," and describe IETF's consensus-based decision-making processes. * The IETF framework that participants engage in their individual capacity, not as company representatives, and "use their best engineering judgment to find the best solution for the whole Internet, not just the best solution for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user," as described in BCP 54 [BCP54]. * The IETF's intellectual property rights policies as set forth in BCP 78 [BCP78] and BCP 79 [BCP79]; these policies are carefully designed to "benefit the Internet community and the public at large, while respecting the legitimate rights of others." * The established conflict of interest policies, such as the IESG Conflict of Interest Policy, the IAB Conflict of Interest Policy or the IETF LLC Conflict of Interest Policy, if and when applicable. 5. Additional Guidelines As the IETF is a standards development environment where representatives from competitors are highly likely to be present, the following additional guidelines are recommended to avoid the possibility of participants violating antitrust laws. 5.1. Adoption and implementation of standards Participation in the IETF should not be conditioned upon the agreement of the participant to use any output of the IETF. Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 3] Internet-Draft IETF Antitrust Guidelines November 2021 There should be no agreement among participants to implement or to adhere to IETF standards, or any discussions as to when participants will begin to offer products conforming to IETF standards. IETF participants should not condition or discuss conditioning the implementation of an IETF standard on the implementer's use of products or services from a particular supplier. IETF participants should not use IETF standards to exclude suppliers or competitors from the marketplace. It is acceptable for IETF participants to discuss the likelihood that adoption of a particular standard would subject implementers to a greater or lesser risk of patent litigation, but such discussions should be conducted with caution and only after consultation with the participants' respective legal counsel. 5.2. Exchange of competitive information IETF participants should avoid the exchange of any proprietary business information that is not necessary to the activities of the IETF. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, IETF participants should not discuss: 1. any restriction on any company's independence in setting prices or establishing production and sales levels 2. prices, discounts, or other terms or conditions of sale, at which products or services implementing an IETF standard should be sold 3. bidding, terms of bidding, or refraining from bidding to sell any product or service 4. individual companies' market shares or sales territories, except where already public 5. the allocation or restriction of customers, markets, or territories in which a company may sell or resell products 6. profits or profit margins 7. the actual cost of the inputs necessary to create a compliant implementation. However, to the extent that such a discussion would be directly relevant and beneficial to the technical purpose of the session, a sensible comparison of relative cost differentials is acceptable Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 4] Internet-Draft IETF Antitrust Guidelines November 2021 8. the status or substance of ongoing or threatened litigation, except as it is directly relevant to IETF 9. agreements to refuse (or conditionally refuse) to do business with a particular supplier 5.3. Market Requirements No IETF participants should engage in, direct, or encourage other IETF participants to engage in, the use of IETF facilities for surveys of customers or gathering of statistical data about market requirements. However IETF participants may make presentations about broad market potential or market requirements for informational purposes. 5.4. Dominant market position IETF participants who are employed by or otherwise represent a company that may be considered to be in a dominant market position should not improperly use the authority of an IETF leadership position to suppress permissible discussions or proposals from a competitor. 6. Escalation of antitrust-related concerns Participants should report potential antitrust concerns in the context of IETF activities to through the following channels: IETF Chair (chair@ietf.org), the IETF LLC executive director (exec- director@ietf.org), the IETF legal counsel (legal@ietf.org), or via the IETF LLC whistleblower service. 7. IANA Considerations No values are assigned in this document, no registries are created, and there is no action assigned to the IANA by this document. 8. Security Considerations This document may be considered to document means to avoid risks to the IETF and IETF participants related to antitrust. One may consider those to be security considerations. Other than that, this document introduces no known security aspects to the IETF or IETF participants. 9. Normative References Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 5] Internet-Draft IETF Antitrust Guidelines November 2021 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, . [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, . [BCP9] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996. Dusseault, L. and R. Sparks, "Guidance on Interoperation and Implementation Reports for Advancement to Draft Standard", BCP 9, RFC 5657, September 2009. Housley, R., Crocker, D., and E. Burger, "Reducing the Standards Track to Two Maturity Levels", BCP 9, RFC 6410, October 2011. Resnick, P., "Retirement of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" Summary Document", BCP 9, RFC 7100, December 2013. Kolkman, O., Bradner, S., and S. Turner, "Characterization of Proposed Standards", BCP 9, RFC 7127, January 2014. Dawkins, S., "Increasing the Number of Area Directors in an IETF Area", BCP 9, RFC 7475, March 2015. Halpern, J., Ed. and E. Rescorla, Ed., "IETF Stream Documents Require IETF Rough Consensus", BCP 9, RFC 8789, June 2020. [BCP25] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998. Wasserman, M., "Updates to RFC 2418 Regarding the Management of IETF Mailing Lists", BCP 25, RFC 3934, October 2004. Resnick, P. and A. Farrel, "IETF Anti-Harassment Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 7776, March 2016. Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 6] Internet-Draft IETF Antitrust Guidelines November 2021 Resnick, P. and A. Farrel, "Update to the IETF Anti- Harassment Procedures for the Replacement of the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC) with the IETF Administration LLC", BCP 25, RFC 8716, February 2020. [BCP54] Moonesamy, S., Ed., "IETF Guidelines for Conduct", BCP 54, RFC 7154, March 2014. [BCP78] Bradner, S., Ed. and J. Contreras, Ed., "Rights Contributors Provide to the IETF Trust", BCP 78, RFC 5378, November 2008. [BCP79] Bradner, S. and J. Contreras, "Intellectual Property Rights in IETF Technology", BCP 79, RFC 8179, May 2017. 10. Informative References Authors' Addresses Joel M. Halpern (editor) Ericsson P. O. Box 6049 Leesburg, VA 20178 United States of America Email: joel.halpern@ericsson.com Brad Biddle Biddle Law PC 650 NE Holladay Street, Suite 1600 Portland, OR 97232 United States of America Email: brad@biddle.law Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 7] Internet-Draft IETF Antitrust Guidelines November 2021 Jay Daley IETF Administration LLC New Zealand Email: jay@staff.ietf.org Halpern, et al. Expires 6 May 2022 [Page 8]