Attendees:
Peter Haggar - IBM
Mic Bowman - Intel
George Goodman - Intel
Mike Pellon - Motorola
Jon Watte - Forterra
Paul Byrne - Sun
Glenn Fisher - Linden Lab
Christian Renaud - Cisco
Discussed ways in which the VWIF could/should be established with regards to IP commitment
Roughly, three different positions were discussed:
1) This is embodied in the current VWIF agreement draft whereby resulting specifications are RF. It basically says that you will donate your IP that relates to interoperability on an RF basis. This includes IP your contribute or IP that gets contributed in a working group you are not participating in.
2) This is the idea that the resulting specifications are RF, like #1, however you would have the ability to exclude certain IP from the Forum.
3) This is the idea that you should have the ability to exclude IP at the working group level. For example, after a specification goes to the SC, there would be a waiting period in which people could search their patent portfolios to see if a specification produced by a WG that they did not participate in read on their IP. They could then decide the potentially RAND terms for that IP to be included in the spec.
A quick and non-binding poll was taken to see where people were:
IBM - 1
Forterra - 2
Motorola, Intel - 3
Sun - Between 2 and 3
Linden Lab - Between 1 and 2
Cisco - Between 1 and 2
Commentary:
Forterra
- No way to protect IP unless you leave the forum.
Motorola
- Not a 1 to 1 relationship between RF and success. Dozens of standards that are successful that are RAND.
- Members should have the ability to exclude IP short of leaving the Forum.
- Members should not have to license IP RF in working groups they are not participating in.
- Concerned about scope creep of the Forum.
Intel & Motorola
- Scope IP for where you participate in the Forum.
- RF for working groups you participate in.
- RAND for where you don't participate.
- RAND for what you exclude.
Intel
- Plenty of widely adopted standards are RAND.
Cisco and Linden
- Not feasible for large companies to search their patent portfolios.
Motorola's opinion is that there is no need to search if we use a RAND model, but there is a need to search if we use an RF model. This could be argued the other way as well whereby you say there is no need to search if all is RF and only have to search if you have to determine what you want to charge royalties for in a RAND model.
