Re: IPR statement in RFC 3450

Thanks Mark

On Oct 22, 2009, at 12:05 PM, Watson, Mark wrote:

> All,
>
> I discussed this with Mike and Lorenzo.
>
> First, our belief is that the statement in RFC3450 is incorrect:  
> there was no IPR disclosure filed against RFC3450 and certainly  
> there was no disclosure filed against RFC3450 by Digital Fountain.
>
> Secondly, we do not believe Digital Fountain had any IPR that should  
> have led to such a disclosure, either for RFC3450 or for the new ALC  
> draft.
>
> We do not know of any other IPR and so we believe the absence of any  
> IPR disclosures in the IETF database is a correct reflection of the  
> IPR situation for ALC (this belief obviously being much stronger for  
> the specific case of Digital Fountain IPR).
>
> As for the question of why the statement is there in RFC3450: the  
> very early drafts, for example http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rmt-pi-alc-01 
> , contained explicit notes about the existence of Digital Fountain  
> IPR on FEC coding and congestion control technologies that were also  
> being discussed in RMT. I think at that time it was probably not  
> completely clear how the FEC coding and congestion control would  
> evolve separately and in relation to ALC and so in the interests of  
> complete openness this kind of explicit statement was included in  
> these early drafts. It was later modified (for example in http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rmt-pi-alc-02) 
>  to say that “ALC may be used with congestion control and other  
> protocols, ..., which have pending or granted patents” i.e. to  
> caution readers that there may be IPR associated with things that  
> might be used with ALC, but which are not required for ALC itself.
>
> This cautionary statement was changed during the publication process  
> to the standard boilerplate that is in the RFC and it is our guess  
> (and no more, since this was all a long time ago) that this change  
> was made in error.
>
> It should be noted that as a result of a very recent WG decision,  
> the new ALC draft does require support for Wave and Equation Based  
> Rate Control, RFC3738, in which Digital Fountain did have IPR which  
> is now owned by Qualcomm and that Qualcomm has filed an IPR  
> disclosure for that RFC, here: https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/ 
> 1182/, which promises royalty-free licenses to all implementors.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark
>
> On 10/22/09 10:25 AM, "Magnus Westerlund" <[email protected] 
> > wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> In the IESG review Cullen raised the issue about the statement in  
> RFC 3450:
>
> 7.  Intellectual Property Issues
>
>    The IETF has been notified of intellectual property rights  
> claimed in
>    regard to some or all of the specification contained in this
>    document.  For more information consult the online list of claimed
>    rights.
>
> This indicates that there should be an IPR disclosure regarding RFC
> 3450, and that likely also applies to draft-ietf-rmt-pi-alc-revised
> also. Can anyone in the WG please shed some light on the statement and
> if there should be a IPR disclosue also on draft-ietf-rmt-pi-alc- 
> revised?
>
> Thanks
>
> Magnus Westerlund
>
> IETF Transport Area Director
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