Re: PAC: IPR clause in CS 6

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Jon wrote:
| | | I have appended below what appear to me to be the relevant
| | | passages of the OASIS IPR policy (modeled very closely on the IETF
| | | IPR policy and adopted by the OASIS board of directors last
| | | December).  Setting aside the question of what we may think of the
| | | adequacy of these provisions, it seems to me that this issue is
| | | already covered.  At the very least, it would appear that IPR is
| | | not a responsibility of the committee that creates a specification
| | | but rather of the OASIS board of directors.  I therefore suggest
| | | that we simply strike item 4 from our list of requirements.
| | | 
| | | Anyone disagree with this interpretation?
| | 
| | Sideways, yes.  The language drafted is faulty, as I argued long
| | ago now, in that it requires formal notice.  The IETF language
| | that OASIS counsel edited to arrive at this text requires the
| | relevant body to act on all information at its disposal, thus
| | avoiding the loophole created here that the Board can know of
| | something but close its eyes to it.  So this language should
| | be changed (back to the perfectly okay language the OASIS counsel
| | mucked up).
| 
| I said
| 
| | | Setting aside the question of what we may think of the adequacy
| | | of these provisions
| 
| I'm not happy with this language, either.  But I'm not happy about
| a lot of things that are beyond the present scope of this
| committee.  What I'm saying is that whatever problems there are
| with the OASIS IPR policy are not ours to solve (at least right
| now).  For better or worse, business decisions like this are the
| purview of the board.  So I think that we are perfectly justified
| in punting on this.

One of its problems is that it is backwards wrt responsibility, and
it's exactly responsibility I'm concerned with.  The *issue* isn't
covered, and we need to be sure it gets covered.  I want the TC
to be responsible for notifying of any IPR claims any of its
members know of - which is the IETF approach, which I think we
should borrow.

| | In either case, the TC members presumably have the relevant
| | info, and need to convey it to the Board.  So we can't simply
| | strike the item, I think.
| 
| I don't think that the members of the TC can be assumed to have
| the relevant info.  (This is a weakness of both the IETF and W3C
| IPR policies as I remember them, too).  In W3C this leads to the
| bizarre conclusion that official representatives should carefully
| maintain complete ignorance of their companies' intellectual
| property so that they can truthfully claim that they don't know of
| any conflicts.  I'd rather avoid this if we can.

Better that than nothing.  The IETF didn't come up with any better
approach, so I doubt we can.  In the case of (for example) TPAML
and CIQ, I doubt the memnbers are ignorant of the IP issues.
...

| I can think of only one approach that might work in the context of
| the standards approval procedure: make a call for IPR claims part
| of the membership review process.  We're already requiring a
| three-month review period before voting begins; can we make a call
| for IPR claims part of that?  This would at least prevent any
| OASIS member from blindsiding the rest of us with unreasonable
| licensing requirements.

Fine by me if it isn't the only mechanism - I don't see how we can
ignore the best source of info, the committee members.

regards, Terry (who is going on vacation on Tuesday the 6th)