[ih] patent licenses, not Why the six month draft expiration ?

[Karl Auerbach]

Funny you should mention Jorge C.  I was trying to find him at a 
gathering just yesterday.  (BTW, decades ago he helped us put together 
the Boston Working Group that kinda buzzed around ICANN.)

I don't understand your point about attracting patent trolls. (And I 
really liked you comment on the trustworthiness - or lack of - in 
today's LLCs that have been trained on whatever junk they can grab.  But 
more carefully trained systems are already coming along.)

And I do understand Vint's point about generating revenue (and 
demonstrating public support) to the US IRS.)

No matter the IETF's policies around standards-making documents there 
will arise copyrights and patents that someone might wish to transfer to 
a nice, tax exempt (e.g. section 501), long-lived, institutional owner - 
such as ISOC - that will make them available to the community on fair 
and reasonable terms.  (In a way we already have this, in a limited 
sense, in the regional IP address registries.)

This holding and licensing is quite distinct from IP disclosure 
obligations on IETF materials.

(As an aside: As a society we are facing a largely under-discussed issue 
of what happens to all of the digital assets a person holds when he dies 
- we certainly don't want important Internet assets to dangle in the 
hands of a probate court like the orphans in Dickens' Bleak House.  
Things like charitable remainder trusts could help people pass useful IP 
rights to ISOC with minimal tax or probate implications.)

     --karl--

On 2/3/24 2:29 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Feb 2024, Karl Auerbach wrote:
>> - I think it would be cool if ISOC or the IETF established an arm 
>> that could accept and hold network related patents and issue licenses 
>> (for free or for reasonable low fees and non-discriminatory terms.)  
>> I have nothing more detailed that that thought, but I do so much 
>> dislike the surfacing of patent trolls, always at the most 
>> inconvenient of times.
>
> Speaking as a former trustee of the IETF Trust,  GAAAAAHHHHH 
> NONONONONONO.
> That would be painting a bullseye on ourselves for patent trolls.
>
> The IETF has a carefully designed patent policy.  It was largely 
> written by Jorge Contreras who is quite literally the world's leading 
> expert on standards and IP.  We were very lucky to have him work with 
> us.  Scott was his coauthor and might fill in some details.
>
> To oversimplify it says everyone involved in developing an RFC must 
> disclose IPR related to it, and the IETF can decide what to do with 
> them. Most IETF standards are either unencumbered or have free public 
> licenses but there have been a few with more restrictive licenses.
>
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8179.html
>
> Here's Jorge's list of papers at SSRN, lots of stuff about FRAND, 
> standard-essential patents, and a certain amount about trolls.
>
> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1335192
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for 
> Dummies",
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly