Network Working Group T.B. Terriberry
Internet-Draft Mozilla Corporation
Intended status: Informational February 18, 2013
Expires: August 22, 2013
Example IPR License Terms
draft-terriberry-ipr-license-00
Abstract
This draft gives provides an example set of licensing terms for use
in IPR disclosures that are compatible with the goals of the proposed
video-codec working group for further discussion and refinement by
participants at the IETF. Although usage of such a license is
strictly voluntary, the hope is that getting agreement on a set of
terms before the bulk of the work begins will allow contributors to
use a common license and minimize the amount of legal analysis that
must be performed in order to deploy the codec.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on August 22, 2013.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
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include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. The License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1. License Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3. Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Scope of the Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3.1. A Reciprocity Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3.2. Defensive Suspension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1. Introduction
The goal of this license, using the words of the current video-codec
charter [1], is to allow the contribution of IPR to a standard which
"can be widely implemented and easily distributed among application
developers, service operators, and end users. The objective is to
produce a codec that can be implemented, distributed, and deployed by
open source and closed source software and hardware vendors, without
the need to request a license, enter into a business agreement, pay
licensing fees or royalties, or attempt to adhere to other onerous
conditions or restrictions."
This goal, particularly the compatibility with open-source licenses,
precludes many forms of normal IPR licensing, including the
requirement for each licensor to explicitly request a license or
perform some overt act to activate a license. The terms here also
attempt to provide some amount of safety to those implementing
standard from others also implementing the same standard, through the
use of a defensive termination clause.
Although this license is designed specifically for use with the
video-codec effort, the terms have been kept generic enough to allow
it to be used elsewhere.
2. The License
2.1. License Grant
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___________ ("Licensor") hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide,
non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in the
"Termination" section below) license to make, have made, use, sell,
offer to sell, import and otherwise transfer any Implementation or
portion thereof, under all Necessary Claims of Licensor (the
"License").
2.2. Definitions
"Original Specification" means draft-ietf-_______________.
"Reference Implementation" means the implementation of the Original
Specification made publicly available at ______________.
"Specification" means the Original Specification or, at your option,
any future update or new version of that specification issued as an
RFC (Request for Comments) by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task
Force).
"Implementation" means any implementation (including the Reference
Implementation) that complies fully with all non-optional portions of
the Specification.
"Licensee" means any party that has received the License, provided
the License to such party has not been terminated under the
"Termination" section below.
"Necessary Claims" of a party means all claims of patents or patent
applications that, (a) currently or at any time in the future, (i)
are owned or controlled by such party or its Affiliates, or (ii) for
which such party or its Affiliates has the authority to grant the
License without the requirement to pay a royalty to any party other
than an Affiliate, and (b) (i) for which there is no commercially
viable means of implementing the Original Specification, including
any optional portion thereof, without infringing such claims; or (ii)
are infringed by the use of the Reference Implementation.
"Affiliate" is any entity controlling, controlled by, or under common
control with a party.
2.3. Termination
If you, directly or indirectly, including via an Affiliate,
subsidiary, agent, or exclusive licensee, (a) file an action for
infringement of a Necessary Claim, or (b) make any other written
claim of infringement of a Necessary Claim, against any Licensee
alleging that any Implementation, in whole or in part, constitutes
direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent
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infringement, then any patent rights granted to you and your
Affiliates under this License shall automatically terminate
retroactively as of the date you first received the License.
3. Discussion
3.1. Scope of the Grant
The scope of the grant is defined by two pieces: a specific draft
(the "Original Specification") and a specific implementation (the
"Reference Implementation"). The idea is to cover both the
algorithms and methods that are required for interoperability (e.g.,
for a video codec, the decoder specification), plus at least one set
of algorithms and methods which can produce a useful implementation
(such as an encoder, packet loss concealment (PLC) in the decoder,
etc.). Although people may still compete on making more optimized
decoders, better encoders or better PLC, they are guaranteed that use
of the reference implementation, at least, is safe.
The "Original Specification" and "Reference Implementation" which
define the scope of the grant are also kept separate from the
"Specification" and "Implementation" which define how the licensed
claims may be used. This allows change control over what the
standard says to remain with the IETF, while ensuring that the scope
of the grant is not open-ended, so parties contributing their IPR
know what they are giving.
3.2. Termination
The termination clause protects a Licensee from infringement claims
by other Licensees. Any Licensee that tries to assert patent claims
against another Licensee will lose their own license, and find
themselves exposed to potential lawsuits from all other Licensees.
This is designed to minimize defections after the standard is
deployed.
3.3. Open Issues
3.3.1. A Reciprocity Clause
The license currently does not define a "reciprocity clause", wherein
Licensees give other Licensees an explicit license back to any IPR
they might own. Instead it relies on the termination clause to
achieve a similar, though not identical effect. Reciprocity clauses
have become more normal in recent patent licenses, and it may be
worth adding one here.
3.3.2. Defensive Suspension
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We have received some early feedback that our defensive termination
clause may be too strong to qualify as RAND. Another alternative is
defensive suspension, wherein parties simply agree not to enforce
their patents unless they themselves are sued. We are still studying
this issue.
4. Acknowledgments
Thanks to those who provided feedback on early drafts of this
license.
5. References
Author's Address
Timothy B. Terriberry
Mozilla Corporation
650 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
USA
Phone: +1 650 903-0800
Email: tterribe@xiph.org
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