[ih] Who owns old RFCs ?

[Brian E Carpenter]

Joe,

The inclusion of the ISOC copyright was mandated by RFC2026 (October 1996)
for "all ISOC standards-related documentation" (remembering that the IETF
looked to ISOC for legal backing), but I forget why it took a year to
implement. Possibly ISI lawyers?

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 22-Apr-20 16:43, Joseph Touch via Internet-history wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Apr 21, 2020, at 9:15 PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> I recommend that the IETF Trust assert that nobody owns the RFCs
>> published before March 1989, and designate a period for anyone who
>> claims a copyright in an RFC published between then and 1994 to approach
>> the Trust to negotiate the claim,…
> 
> 
> There’s still the period between 1994 and Oct 1998 (see below) to deal with, though. I recall the ISOC asking transfer of copyright for those works at some point, but not all were granted.
> 
> Also, note that not all DARPA contracts for work that generated RFCs explicitly indicated RFCs as a deliverable. NSF grants have no deliverables.
> 
> There is some information available at the RFC pages here:
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/old/copyright.17Feb04.html <https://www.rfc-editor.org/old/copyright.17Feb04.html>
> 
> Note that this page links to a story about facts claimed to date back to 1988 that is not accurate; it implies that RFCs included an ISOC copyright statement before RFC2220 (Oct 1997), but they do not. Notably, that was exactly one year (to the month) before Jon’s passing.
> 
> Joe
>