Intellectual Property Rights in IETF Technology

Scott Bradner, Harvard University

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2004)

The IETF policies about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), such as patent rights, relative to technologies developed in the IETF are designed to ensure that IETF working groups and participants have as much information about any IPR constraints on a technical proposal as possible. The policies are also intended to benefit the Internet community and the public at large, while respecting the legitimate rights of IPR holders. This memo details the IETF policies concerning IPR related to technology worked on within the IETF. It also describes the objectives that the policies are designed to meet. This memo updates RFC 2026 and, with RFC 3667, replaces Section 10 of RFC 2026. This memo also updates paragraph 4 of Section 3.2 of RFC 2028, for all purposes, including reference [2] in RFC 2418.