Promoting Compliance with Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Disclosure Rules
RFC 6702

[Ballot comment]
I've cleared my Discuss, supporting the inclusion of the
text in Stewart's Comment.

"Socialize" is a colloquialism that might better be replaced by
"discuss"; e.g., from Section 3:

  In general, these opportunities are encountered during initial
  public discussion, working group adoption...

  When IETF participants wish to promote public discussion of a
  personal draft in hopes of future adoption by a working group...

[Ballot discuss]
This Discuss point is pretty focused and should be easy to resolve.

Should there be a mention in section 3.2 that an IPR declaration on a
personal draft must be followed up with an IPR declaration on the
renamed draft after it is adopted by a working group?

[Ballot comment]
"Socialize" is a colloquialism that might better be replaced by
"discuss"; e.g., from Section 3:

  In general, these opportunities are encountered during initial
  public discussion, working group adoption...

  When IETF participants wish to promote public discussion of a
  personal draft in hopes of future adoption by a working group...

[Ballot comment]
I am clearing my discuss on the basis that text of the following form will be added:

5.  A Note About Preliminary Disclosures

  Early disclosures are not necessarily complete disclosures.  Indeed,
  [RFC3979] can be read as encouraging "preliminary disclosure" (e.g.,
  when a new patent application is made), yet a preliminary disclosure
  might not be updated as new information becomes available later in
  the standardization process (e.g., when a patent is actually
  granted).  To help prevent early IPR disclosures from becoming stale
  or incomplete, at important junctures in the standardization process
  (e.g., before Working Group Last Call or IETF Last Call) WG chairs
  and ADs are encouraged to request that the Executive Director of the
  IETF contact those who submitted early IPR disclosures about updating
  their disclosures.

[Ballot discuss]

Something that is not addressed is the issue of increasing the extent of the disclosure.

Bob presents a draft and his employer fooCo files a provisional IPR statement saying that they have as yet unpublished patents.

The BCP79 says that updating the disclosure is optional and only required on request by a WGC, AD, or IETF Chair, and as a result IPR disclosures do not necessarily contain the most complete information.

If the goal is for the chair to make the most reliable judgement of consensus, they should request that fooCo  update the IPR disclosure to include patent application numbers that are now available before WGLC.

The text text should address this point, either as recommended action or as a warning.

[Ballot comment]
- Section 3.3.  Requesting WG Last Call

  Working Group Last Call is a particularly significant milestone for a
  working group document, measuring consensus within the working group
  one final time.  If IPR disclosure statements have not been
  submitted, the judgement of consensus by the chairs would be less
  than reliable. 

While I think I understand what the second sentence means, my first impression while reading it was: what's connection between "IPR disclosure statement" and the consensus "reliability"?
Do you want to say that the "judgement of consensus would be based on incomplete assumptions", or something similar?.
Most certainly not an issue for English native speakers!


- I see in section 3.4
  If the answer to the write-up
  question is not favorable, or if the chairs did not take any of the
  actions listed above, the AD might choose to contact the authors and
  listed contributors to confirm that the appropriate IPR disclosure
  statements have been filed before advancing the document through the
  publication process.

That document would be perfect if the email for that use case would be added in the Appendix A.


- Section A.4.  Reminder to Meeting Presenter
Isn't the WG chair who is the supposed to send this email?
It's signed by "Christopher (as AD)"

- For new comers (and this draft mainly targets new comers), maybe a sentence or two or how to check whether there is already an IPR associated with a draft.
Example: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-polk-ipr-disclosure-04 -> an IPR link would appear on the top right hand side
Or insert the draft/RFC in https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/search/

[Ballot comment]
In section 3.4, after the quote from the shepherd questionnaire, at the beginning of the last paragraph, I suggest inserting a sentence like, "Shepherds should be asking these questions of the authors directly." It's implicit, but it seems to me not implicit enough.

[Ballot comment]

- I had a situation where there was an IPR declaration for
RFCfoo, but when the RFCfoo-bis draft was being done, nobody
went to the IPR holder and asked them to say if the new draft
should also have a declaration, and by the time it got to me,
nobody from the IPR holder was involved in the WG. That added a
bit of delay. Anyway, would it make sense to say that another
good thing for a chair/secrerary to do is, when starting work
on a bis document where the original RFC has an IPR
declaration, please go check with whoever posted that
declaration to see if a new one can be gotten or is needed?

- I guess the above is similar to handling the replaced-by
relationship (that the IPR tools follow) so would similar
guidance for that situation be worth adding, i.e. "please check
the replaced-by" relationship is in order so the right thing
will happen at IETF LC at least.

(Sorry for thinking of those so late in the game)

IANA has reviewed draft-polk-ipr-disclosure-03, which is currently in Last Call, and has the following comments:

IANA understands that, upon approval of this document, there are no IANA Actions that need completion.

The following Last Call announcement was sent out:

From: The IESG
To: IETF-Announce
Reply-To: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Last Call:  (Promoting Compliance with Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Disclosure Rules) to Informational RFC


The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to consider
the following document:
- 'Promoting Compliance with Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
  Disclosure Rules'
  as Informational RFC

The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
ietf@ietf.org mailing lists by 2012-05-28. Exceptionally, comments may be
sent to iesg@ietf.org instead. In either case, please retain the
beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

Abstract


  The disclosure process for intellectual property rights (IPR) in
  documents produced within the IETF stream is essential to the
  accurate development of community consensus.  However, this process
  is not always followed by participants during IETF standardization.
  Regardless of the cause or motivation, noncompliance with IPR
  disclosure rules can derail or delay completion of standards
  documents.  This document describes strategies for promoting
  compliance with the IPR disclosure rules.  The strategies are
  primarily intended for area directors, working group chairs, and
  working group secretaries.




The file can be obtained via
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-polk-ipr-disclosure/

IESG discussion can be tracked via
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-polk-ipr-disclosure/ballot/


No IPR declarations have been submitted directly on this I-D.

(1) What type of RFC is being requested (BCP, Proposed Standard,
Internet Standard, Informational, Experimental, or Historic)?  Why
is this the proper type of RFC?  Is this type of RFC indicated in the
title page header?

Informational, as is proper since its explaining things
and the headers are right.

(2) The IESG approval announcement includes a Document Announcement
Write-Up. Please provide such a Document Announcement Write-Up. Recent
examples can be found in the "Action" announcements for approved
documents. The approval announcement contains the following sections:

Technical Summary

  The IETF has developed and documented policies that govern the
  behavior of all IETF participants with respect to Intellectual
  Property Rights (IPR) about which they might reasonably be aware.

  The IETF takes conformance to these IPR policies very seriously.
  However, there has been some ambiguity as to what the appropriate
  sanctions are for the violation of these policies, and how and by
  whom those sanctions are to be applied.

  This document discusses these issues and provides a suite of
  potential actions that may be taken within the IETF community.

Working Group Summary

  This is not a product of an IETF WG. There was no
  big controversy but there were comments when this was
  discussed on the IETF discuss list.

Document Quality

  This is not something for which you write code. We do have
  process experience that directly lead to its production however.

Personnel

  Stephen Farrell is the document shepherd.
  Russ Housley is the responsible AD.

(3) Briefly describe the review of this document that was performed by
the Document Shepherd.  If this version of the document is not ready
for publication, please explain why the document is being forwarded to
the IESG.

I have read the document and believe it is ready for
publication.

(4) Does the document Shepherd have any concerns about the depth or
breadth of the reviews that have been performed? 

No. The document was discussed on the IETF discuss list.

(5) Do portions of the document need review from a particular or from
broader perspective, e.g., security, operational complexity, AAA, DNS,
DHCP, XML, or internationalization? If so, describe the review that
took place.

No.

(6) Describe any specific concerns or issues that the Document Shepherd
has with this document that the Responsible Area Director and/or the
IESG should be aware of? For example, perhaps he or she is uncomfortable
with certain parts of the document, or has concerns whether there really
is a need for it. In any event, if the WG has discussed those issues and
has indicated that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those
concerns here.

None.

(7) Has each author confirmed that any and all appropriate IPR
disclosures required for full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78
and BCP 79 have already been filed. If not, explain why.

Yes. Explicitly.

(8) Has an IPR disclosure been filed that references this document?
If so, summarize any WG discussion and conclusion regarding the IPR
disclosures.

No.

(9) How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it
represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with others
being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and agree with it? 

There is no WG. There seemed to be consensus for its publication
on the IETF discuss list.

(10) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
discontent? If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in separate
email messages to the Responsible Area Director. (It should be in a
separate email because this questionnaire is publicly available.)

No.

(11) Identify any ID nits the Document Shepherd has found in this
document. (See http://www.ietf.org/tools/idnits/ and the Internet-Drafts
Checklist). Boilerplate checks are not enough; this check needs to be
thorough.

Nothing.

(12) Describe how the document meets any required formal review
criteria, such as the MIB Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

N/A.

(13) Have all references within this document been identified as
either normative or informative?

Yes.

(14) Are there normative references to documents that are not ready for
advancement or are otherwise in an unclear state? If such normative
references exist, what is the plan for their completion?

References are fine.

(15) Are there downward normative references references (see RFC 3967)?
If so, list these downward references to support the Area Director in the
Last Call procedure.

No.

(16) Will publication of this document change the status of any
existing RFCs? Are those RFCs listed on the title page header, listed
in the abstract, and discussed in the introduction? If the RFCs are not
listed in the Abstract and Introduction, explain why, and point to the
part of the document where the relationship of this document to the
other RFCs is discussed. If this information is not in the document,
explain why the WG considers it unnecessary.

No.

(17) Describe the Document Shepherd's review of the IANA considerations
section, especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the
document. Confirm that all protocol extensions that the document makes
are associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries.
Confirm that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly
identified. Confirm that newly created IANA registries include a
detailed specification of the initial contents for the registry, that
allocations procedures for future registrations are defined, and a
reasonable name for the new registry has been suggested (see RFC 5226).

There are none.

(18) List any new IANA registries that require Expert Review for future
allocations. Provide any public guidance that the IESG would find
useful in selecting the IANA Experts for these new registries.

N/A.

(19) Describe reviews and automated checks performed by the Document
Shepherd to validate sections of the document written in a formal
language, such as XML code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, etc.

N/A.