Worth Reading: BCP79bis and Patents in the IETF Working on technical standards in the computing, communications and networking industries often involves dealing with patents. Like most standards-development organizations (SDOs), the IETF has policies that deal with patents covering IETF protocols, specifications and standards. The IETF’s first patent policy appeared in RFC 1310 (Mar, 1992), but the basis for today’s policy approach originated with RFC 2026 (October 1996), which still defines many aspects of the Internet Standards Process. The first major overhaul of this policy occurred a decade later in RFC 3979 (also designated as BCP 79). Though the IETF’s policies relating to copyrights, open source code and other forms of intellectual property (IPR) evolved, particularly after the formation of the IETF Trust in December 2005, the IETF’s patent policy remained relatively stable for more than 20 years. —IETF Blog Related ← Worth Reading: AMD and the Infinity FabricWorth Reading: The future is hardware →
