[ih] Who owns old RFCs ?

[Harald Alvestrand]

History note....

On 4/22/20 4:04 AM, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> In December 2005 the trust was set up, and the Article V of the trust
> agreement says that the grantors CNRI and ISOC contribute IPR to the
> trust.  Schedule A lists the IPR including:
>
>     All of its rights in, and copies of, each of the following
>     materials that is currently used (as of the Effective Date) in the
>     administrative, financial and/or other operation of the IETF: ...
>
>     current Internet Drafts and Request for Comments.
>
> I don't know what "current" means here but since I am an optimist I
> hope it means the rights they may have to all RFCs published up to
> that point rather than ones that were standards at the time.

I seem to remember that discussion ... I think we (on the IETF side) 
concluded that "all of its rights" sidestepped the question of who 
actually owned the rights, and whether there were any actual rights that 
could be owned; figuring out rights (particularly to expired 
internet-drafts) was deemed too hard to be worth digging into, and a 
distraction from the main focus of divorcing from CNRI.