[ih] Who owns old RFCs ?

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 29-Apr-20 22:56, Harald Alvestrand via Internet-history wrote:
> 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.

s/sidestepped/intentionally sidestepped/

We really (including our legal advisors) didn't know who really owned
what rights and we really hoped we'd never need to find out in court,
so that formulation was chosen in the knowledge that it wasn't in
any sense a claim over rights that third parties might have. The
intention was to ensure that neither ISOC nor CNRI had any future
claims. (Not that either of them had any evil intentions; quite the
opposite, which is presumably why they both signed.)

    Brian (one of the original Trustees)