[OpenID board] IPR Policy and Process Proposal

[Dick Hardt]

On 25-Apr-07, at 8:56 AM, Drummond Reed wrote:
> RE the IPR Policy, Blanket Reciprocity term, I don’t think you give  
> a license for anything other than the Necessary Claims you  
> contribute. The issue is that if you sue another Contributor for  
> ANYTHING – even something totally unrelated to OpenID – you lose  
> the license they have provided to any Necessary Claims they  
> contributed.
>
> See the suggestion in the Blanket Reciprocity open issue section  
> for a simple way to fix that.
>
> If I can't sue, I can't enforce, and I effectively have granted a  
> license. Even with the suggested change, If someone's  
> implementation infringes on a patent that is NOT required to  
> implement OpenID, then if I sue, then they can counter sue for  
> infringing on any OpenID related patent. Effectively I have granted  
> a right to any patent used in their implementation.
>
> [=Drummond] With the suggested change, if you sue a contributor  
> over infringement of a patent you own that has nothing to do with  
> OpenID, they can’t sue you back for infringement of their patent  
> that reads on OpenID, i.e., your suing them doesn’t invalidate  
> their “patent promise”. Only you suing them over infringement of  
> something you contributed to OpenID under the patent promise would  
> enable them to countersue you for infringement of something they  
> contributed. That’s why I like the suggested change.
That is not how I read the change. Seems clear that if you sue  
someone for any infringement in an implementation that the patent  
promise is invalidated. The infringement is not limited to necessary  
claims:

"This language sets up "blanket reciprocity", meaning that if you sue  
a Contributor for patent infringment of any kind, including  
infringement of patents of yours that have nothing to do with OpenID  
(for example a hardware patent), the Contributor is no longer bound  
by their patent promise on OpenID and can sue you for infringement of  
any Necessary Claims they have on OpenID."

> RE the formal process, I agree that essentially it’s a very  
> lightweight standards process. Call it a community process. But if  
> you read Gabe’s proposal closely, the full skeleton is there.  
> Voting (which would take place directly on the lists), membership  
> (which involves only membership on the lists), governance (which is  
> this process doc itself) is all covered – it’s all just very  
> lightweight.
>
>
>
> Given the IP significance of this, the voting process is too loose.  
> This is not open source software where there is a right to fork and  
> on-going support of a core group is needed to move forward. The  
> dynamics around a standard are quite different, and my experience  
> with voting on the OpenID list has been very disappointing and  
> inconclusive.
>
>
> [=Drummond] I can only say that with this lightweight IPR process  
> in place, voting on the list would become more formal and “tighter”  
> while still being a lot less heavy than standard SDOs.
Tighter means more process -- I'd like to see how it would be made  
"tighter".
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