[cabfpub] Minutes for future working group meetings

[Ryan Sleevi]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Kirk Hall via Public <public at cabforum.org>
wrote:

>
> *“Contribution” *means material, including Draft Guidelines, Draft
> Guideline text, and modifications to other Contributions, made verbally or
> in a tangible form of expression (including in electronic media) which is
> provided by a Participant in the process of developing a Draft Guideline
> for the purpose of incorporating such material into a Draft Guideline or a
> Final Guideline or Final Maintenance Guideline*. For a verbal
> contribution to be deemed a Contribution hereunder it must be memorialized
> within approved meeting minutes of the CAB Forum*.
>
<snip>

> 3.       As to the *written* minutes for working groups, we need a
> careful list of *who* participated on each call or meeting.  In most
> cases I think the text of the Minutes can be a summary of the topics
> discussed, a summary of what each participant said on each subject showing
> whether or not the participant made a “Contribution”, and a summary of
> decisions and actions taken.  I don’t think we need actual transcripts or
> verbatim Minutes of all the back-and-forth, just the main details of who
> contributed – if we later want more details to confirm the Minutes, we can
> go back to the recordings for that.  So far IP Exclusion Notices have been
> filed only for domain validation methods, so we may want to make the
> Minutes of Validation Working Group meetings a bit more detailed than for
> other working groups.
>

Kirk,

It's unclear what you consider to be a substantial enough Contribution to
trigger the terms within our IPR policy. Are you suggesting that simply
recording the suggestion, without recording who it was from, is sufficient
to trigger the IPR policy?

I'm also unclear the purpose/value of the recordings after the approved
meeting minutes are recorded. Do you believe our Bylaws permit us to amend
minutes after approval? If so, could you explain why. If not, then how does
that relate with the statement within the IPR policy regarding
memorialization?

A concrete example of an issue, one which I believe is of likely real
concern for members, is what happens if, during the discussion of
Validation Methods, Member A (which holds IPR on the matter) is silent, and
Member B (which is aware of Member A's IPR) suggests a method that might
otherwise infringe upon Member A's patents?

Are you suggesting that, by virtue of recording Member A's presence on the
call, and that "a member" (in this case, Member B) suggested an infringing
method, that it's sufficient to cause Member A to lose their rights?

Conversely, what about the situation where Member A makes a contribution
that would directly implicate their IPR, but it was not recorded who
suggested that. Would that be sufficient for Member A to mount a defense
that because the Minutes did not record them as making the Contribution,
that it does not meet the level of "Contribution" - and therefore, no RF
licensing is triggered?

I'm mentioning all of this with the full awareness that Section 6.4
attempts to prevent this, but also noting that it too hinges upon the
definition of Contribution - so care must be taken here to examine the
potential situations.

While it may seem overly pedantic to worry about such situations, I would
simply highlight that we continue to run into situations 'in the edge
cases'. Symantec's previous disclosure is, for example, a situation that
arose because disclosures are only necessary to the chair, and it was not
anticipated as to how to handle the situation when the chair is also the IP
holder, and thus the timing of the disclosure non-transparent. Similarly,
we know that the uncertainty of minutes has created its own set of issues
with respect to existing Validation WG, so hopefully we can strive for
better specificity to avoid issues.
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