[cabf_governance] FW: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Mon Apr 23 12:12:57 MST 2018

Hi Kirk,

I will draft a response for you and the Governance WG to review.  My general reaction is that there are many large companies who are members of the CAB Forum, and we have the same patent portfolio challenges, yet we signed the IPR agreement.  If Siemens desires to join the CAB Forum (no matter which type of member), they’ll need to sign the IPR agreement like everyone else.

As an aside, I don’t like the suggestion about joining as an individual to get around the IPR Policy.  This would give the Siemens employees an opportunity to insert Siemens IP into the guidelines without an IP commitment.  This would create an IP vulnerability for the other CAB Forum members, as Siemens could claim their IP is being infringed because they aren’t a member and didn’t grant a license.  We should not suggest this approach, as it is not in the best interest of the CAB Forum.

We also need to do away with the impression that folks can use GitHub to get around the IPR Policy.  We should also tell Siemens that they can no longer participate on GH unless they sign the IPR Agreement.

Best regards,

Virginia Fournier
Senior Standards Counsel
 Apple Inc.
☏ 669-227-9595
✉︎ vmf at apple.com <mailto:vmf at apple.com>

On Apr 23, 2018, at 11:39 AM, Kirk Hall via Govreform <govreform at cabforum.org> wrote:

See the proposal from Siemens for modification of the IPR Agreement obligations, and my response.

Does someone on this WG (Virginia?) want to respond directly?

Kirk

From: Kirk Hall 
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2018 11:38 AM
To: 'Wichmann, Markus Peter' <markus.wichmann at siemens.com <mailto:markus.wichmann at siemens.com>>
Cc: Buschart, Rufus <rufus.buschart at siemens.com <mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com>>; Grotz, Florian <florian.grotz at siemens.com <mailto:florian.grotz at siemens.com>>
Subject: RE: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Markus – I apologize for my delay in responding – I was at the RSA 2018 meeting in San Francisco last week.

The timing is unfortunate for talking about changes to the Forum’s IPR Policy, as a Governance Change Working Group just completed two years of work to change our structure, which also required changes to our IPR Policy – the updated policy is being circulated and signed by the members and Interested Parties right now.  The updated agreement is attached.

I will forward your message to that Working Group for review, but I don’t think they will endorse it.  The existing IPR Agreement (which is still part of the new agreement) was developed over a year in 2011, with IP lawyers from Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. all involved.  It was based on the existing IPR Agreement language of standards bodies such as W3C, which most of our companies have already signed.  So I think modifications to that would not be popular – the existing language was hammered out (and amended once) and everyone now thinks they know what it means.

One possible solution is for you to sign the IPR Agreement (version 1.3 attached) as an individual, and don’t list Siemens itself as an Interested Party.  The agreement obligations would then only apply to you as an individual, and you would be able to post to the various lists.  That’s what some others have done.

Kirk

From: Wichmann, Markus Peter [mailto:markus.wichmann at siemens.com <mailto:markus.wichmann at siemens.com>] 
Sent: Monday, April 9, 2018 1:17 PM
To: Kirk Hall <Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com <mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com>>
Cc: Buschart, Rufus <rufus.buschart at siemens.com <mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com>>; Grotz, Florian <florian.grotz at siemens.com <mailto:florian.grotz at siemens.com>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL]AW: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Hello Kirk, 

Discussing with our legal department, we could offer the following:

“Siemens AG will allow the use of Siemens AG patents relating to the browser functionality that is the subject of the Browser Forum by members of the Forum at no cost, to the extent that the members use these patents in connection with their own products and solutions.”

Please note, we cannot decide for the patents of our affiliates, especially not about the patents of affiliates which we control as “strategically managed companies”, as they are themselves listed on the stock exchange. 

Would that be a good starting point for the discussion, as you suggested?

BR, Markus  

 <> 
Von: Wichmann, Markus Peter (GS IT ISEC TE DI IS) 
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 4. April 2018 10:18
An: 'Kirk Hall'; Buschart, Rufus (GS IT HR 7 4)
Cc: Grotz, Florian (GS IT HR 7 4)
Betreff: AW: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Hello Kirk, Rufus,

first, no mail got missed, I did not manage to clear my to do list completely before my vacation – Rufus, thanks for taking over.

Kirk, thank you very much for your clarification and your suggestion how to overcome the IP issue. As we definitely see the value in participating in the CA/B Forum, I will reach out to our lawyers and ask them to provide a memo as you suggested.

BR, Markus

Von: Kirk Hall [mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com <mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com>] 
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 4. April 2018 02:21
An: Buschart, Rufus (GS IT HR 7 4)
Cc: Wichmann, Markus Peter (GS IT ISEC TE DI IS); Grotz, Florian (GS IT HR 7 4)
Betreff: RE: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Ah, this is a difficult issue.

For several years the CA/Browser Forum operated as a non-corporate entity (just a name, really) without any IPR Agreement.  Then, around 2011, the browsers led by Microsoft insisted we create an IPR Agreement to avoid IP conflicts when adopting “best practices” in CA/Browser Forum document (which eventually become the equivalent of standards or requirements once the browsers adopt them as trusted root program requirements for being included in their browsers, and also become WebTrust / ETSI audit standards).  Their biggest stated concern was that a CABF member could participate in drafting a CABF guideline while secretly knowing it had a patent on the process.  After the browsers made the guideline a program requirement for all CAs, the member could then surprise everyone and demand an IP license with royalties.  A drafting committee of IP lawyers (again dominated by the browsers) turned to models like the IP agreement of W3C, etc. as a template for the CABF IPR Agreement.

That’s how we got to our current IPR Agreement.  I personally have no great investment in the IPR Agreement, and think that it is unlikely that any CABF requirements are likely to get into any “patentable” processes – plus we can simply eliminate a requirement if someone shows up demanding a royalty.  But others in the Forum don’t agree with me.

Also – the active member participants in the Forum are technology oriented, not law oriented, and it’s exceedingly difficult to get them to focus on IP issues.  It might be somewhat painful trying to get the whole Forum to discuss this – they would likely turn to their IP lawyers instead, and the IP lawyers often are hard to schedule.  In addition, and changes would have to preserve the current objective of our IPR Agreement, which is essentially to force parties who participate in discussion of changes to Forum standards to disclose any IP they have that is relevant to the changes, or else automatically grant non-exclusive royalty free licenses to the IP.

With that, I would say I can certainly forward to the Forum any suggestions from Siemens for changes to our IPR Agreement – the suggestions would need to be in pretty simple language (these are not lawyers) with good reasons for making the changes.  Also, it would be very helpful to Siemens’ case if you can point out other ISO standards organizations that already use the IP approach you are suggesting – so you can reassure the Forum members that this is already done in other places, is reasonable, and works.  I don’t think the Forum will want to make “custom” changes to our IPR Agreement that are not fairly standard in the IP agreements of other standards organizations.

With this information, do you want to propose your changes?  I would not spend a great deal of time on this for the first effort – maybe a fairly short memo.  I can then forward to Forum members (it would be on the Public list, so anyone could see it), and we could schedule a time on a future CABF conference call for you to discuss.  Let me know if you are interested.

I don’t use the github link you included in your message below, so I’m not fully aware of who gets access.  Let me do some checking on that, and I will get back to you.

Kirk

From: Buschart, Rufus [mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com <mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com>] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2018 10:47 AM
To: Kirk Hall <Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com <mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com>>
Cc: Wichmann, Markus Peter <markus.wichmann at siemens.com <mailto:markus.wichmann at siemens.com>>; Grotz, Florian <florian.grotz at siemens.com <mailto:florian.grotz at siemens.com>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL]RE: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Hello Kirk!

I’m not sure if Markus reached out to you before his vacation – I haven’t seen any email but maybe it’s only because I wasn’t on cc: In this case please excuse receiving double emails.

We got feedback from our intellectual properties department and they told us, that they would need to check a big list of potentially affected patents. This would take a very long time and will cost a lot of money – so we can’t really do this. But would you be willing to discuss with our legal department changes in the IPR-form so that it would be possible for us to join? Otherwise I would like to propose that we continue to contribute through GitHub (https://github.com/cabforum/documents/issues <https://github.com/cabforum/documents/issues> ) for which no IPR form seems to be necessary.

Greetings from Bavaria

Rufus

Siemens AG
GS IT HR 7 4
Hugo-Junkers-Str. 9
90411 Nuernberg, Germany 
Tel.: +49 1522 2894134
mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com <mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com>
www.siemens.com/ingenuityforlife <https://siemens.com/ingenuityforlife>
<image001.gif>
From: Kirk Hall [mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com <mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com>] 
Sent: Mittwoch, 17. Januar 2018 23:15
To: Buschart, Rufus (GS IT HR 7 4)
Cc: Wichmann, Markus Peter (GS IT ISEC TE DI IS); Grotz, Florian (GS IT HR 7 4)
Subject: RE: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

In theory, Siemens shouldn’t be participating in working group lists right now because of IP issues – that’s why we require Interested Parties to sign the IPR Agreement first.  See attached.  We would welcome Siemens if it wants to do that.

From: Buschart, Rufus [mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com <mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com>] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2018 10:41 AM
To: Kirk Hall <Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com <mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com>>
Cc: Wichmann, Markus Peter <markus.wichmann at siemens.com <mailto:markus.wichmann at siemens.com>>; Grotz, Florian <florian.grotz at siemens.com <mailto:florian.grotz at siemens.com>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL]RE: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Hi Kirk!

Thank you for your email!

Right now, we are only an ‘un-official interested party’, as we are a sub-CA to QuoVadis and therefore officially being represented by them. I personally like the idea, that we could become an official interested party under CA/B forums Bylaws, but I have to discuss this with my Policy Management Authority.

With best regards

Rufus

Siemens AG
Information Technology
Human Resources
PKI / Trustcenter
GS IT HR 7 4
Hugo-Junkers-Str. 9
90411 Nuernberg, Germany 
Tel.: +49 1522 2894134
mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com <mailto:rufus.buschart at siemens.com>
www.siemens.com/ingenuityforlife <https://siemens.com/ingenuityforlife>
<image001.gif>
From: Kirk Hall [mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com <mailto:Kirk.Hall at entrustdatacard.com>] 
Sent: Mittwoch, 17. Januar 2018 19:10
To: Buschart, Rufus (GS IT HR 7 4)
Subject: Siemens participation in CA/Browser Forum

Hi, Rufus – I see you have posted to some emails relating to the work of the Validation Working Group of the CA/Browser Forum (relating to validation of domains).

Can you remind me of Siemens’ involvement in the Forum?  Is Siemens an Interested Party under our Bylaws?  I don’t see it listed on our wiki.

I’m not objecting to your involvement, I’m just trying to figure it out.  How did you get included on the list?

If you are not already an Interested Party, it is easy to become one and then you can post directly to the VWG list.

Thanks.

Kirk Hall
Chair, CA/Browser Forum
<CAB Forum Agreement for IPR Policy_20FEB18.pdf><CABF-IPR-Policy-v.1.3_4APR18.pdf>_______________________________________________
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