Re: Reminder Revised OASIS Membership Agreement - Review ends 15 Nov

["Andrew Webber" <awebber@wwwebbers.com>]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 17:34:09 -0500 (EST),
member_services@oasis-open.org wrote:

>This new agreement seeks to:
>
>-  Clarify eligibility rules for Individual Members. 
>Under the modified agreement, OASIS membership categories 
>will specify that only persons who are acting on their 
>own behalf, and are not contributing someone else's 
>intellectual property (such as under a work-for-hire or 
>employment arrangement), may join in the "Individual" 
>member class. The objective is to better assure that the 
>parties who actually own or control the contributions 
>made to a TC are the ones who become members, and 
>therefore are bound by the IPR Policy.

This assumes that an individual joins OASIS for only one purpose at
any given time.  What if I want to participate in some OASIS TCs on
behalf of a client to whom I have assigned IP rights for work done
on that contract, and other OASIS TCs for my own benefit or for a
client to whom I have not assigned IP rights?  What if I want to
monitor but not contribute (or at least not contribute intellectual
property)?

The paragraph quoted above implies that on the day the new IPR
policy is implemented, I can no longer be an Individual member due
to some activities for one client.  When that contract is
completed, can I join OASIS again?  Must I then drop out again at
some future time that another client gets some of my IP rights?

Although this discussion is aimed at individual members, what about
employees of a Small Consulting Firm (SCF) to whom they have
assigned their IP rights?  If SCF joins OASIS, and later an
employee works on a project for a client who retains IP rights for
that project, but is not an OASIS member, can the employee
participate?  The IP rights are not his, nor are they SCF's.

Would it not be better (I think so) to say that Individual and
other members may not contribute intellectual property to which
they do not have rights?


andrew [awebber@wwwebbers.com]
ph 613-797-8123
fx 831-300-4097
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