RE: [chairs] Comments and IP

[James Bryce Clark <jamie.clark@oasis-open.org>]

At 07:12 AM 4/14/2006, Hal Lockhart wrote:
>Hi Patrick, how have you been?
>I believe the issue is that OASIS needs a positive confirmation that the 
>party providing feedback actively agrees to the terms of the Feedback 
>License (Appendix A of the IPR Policy). Since this commits the party to 
>things like patent licensing terms, mere notice is not sufficient. They 
>have to sign and return the form.
>This is not my area of expertise, but perhaps a click-thru license on the 
>web page might be sufficient. However I don't think an automated message 
>on a mailing list would ever be sufficient to create a binding legal 
>commitment.
>Hal

     We do want to make it easy for people to give OASIS comments, in a 
reasonably safe manner.   "Reasonably" means taking an appropriate and 
conventional level of cautions, but not going so overboard as to 
unnecessarily discourage input.
     Opinions might differ, even in a community of e-commerce experts (or 
their employers, or their lawyers) about whether electronically-formed 
agreements, licenses or assents are enforceable.
     Perhaps the "dead-tree" lobby has a big fan club in some licensing 
departments.
     Having worked for some years on the international enforceability of 
electronic agreements and signatures, prior to joining OASIS, personally I 
have little doubt that safe wholly-electronic practices are possible.  Some 
of our colleagues who are vigorously promoting commercial systems that 
incorporate WSBPEL, ebXML, WS-TX, WSCAF or BTP might agree.
     Perhaps I should raise this concern with our Board's IPR 
committee.  JoAnn and Patrick, do you think we're missing significant 
amounts of specification input from people who would give it, if it were 
easier to assent to our feedback terms?   Do we have some reason to believe 
that the forms are a turn-off?
     Cordially  Jamie

~   James Bryce Clark
~   Director, Standards Development, OASIS
~   jamie.clark@oasis-open.org