]> IETF IPMC

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General Area gen BCP The IETF policies about rights in Contributions to the IETF are designed to ensure that such Contributions can be made available to the IETF and Internet communities while permitting the authors to retain as many rights as possible. This memo is an update to and retains the same consistent policies about intellectual property rights in Contributions to the IETF and contains the edits needed to recognize the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation (IPMC) as the successor to the IETF Trust. This memo updates . About This Document The latest revision of this draft can be found at . Status information for this document may be found at . Discussion of this document takes place on the genarea Working Group mailing list (), which is archived at . Subscribe at . Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at .

Conventions and Definitions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here. a. "Contribution": any submission to the IETF intended by the Contributor for publication as all or part of an Internet-Draft or RFC (except for RFC Editor Contributions described in Section 4 below) and any statement made within the context of an IETF activity. Such statements include oral statements in IETF sessions as well as written and electronic communications, made at any time or place, that are addressed to:

• the IETF plenary session,
• any IETF working group or portion thereof,
• any Birds of a Feather (BOF) session,
• the IESG, or any member thereof on behalf of the IESG,
• the IAB, or any member thereof on behalf of the IAB,
• any IETF mailing list, including the IETF list itself, any working group or design team list, or any other list functioning under IETF auspices,
• the RFC Editor or the Internet-Drafts function (except for RFC Editor Contributions, as described in Section 4 below).

Statements made outside of an IETF session, mailing list, or other function, that are clearly not intended to be input to an IETF activity, group, or function are not IETF Contributions in the context of this document. b. "Contributor": an individual submitting a Contribution. c. "Indirect Contributor": any person who has materially or substantially contributed to a Contribution without being personally involved in its submission to the IETF. d. "Copyright": the legal right granted to an author in a document or other work of authorship under applicable law. A "copyright" is not equivalent to a "right to copy". Rather a copyright encompasses all of the exclusive rights that an author has in a work, such as the rights to copy, publish, distribute and create derivative works of the work. An author often cedes these rights to his or her employer or other parties as a condition of employment or compensation. e. "IETF": in the context of this document, the IETF includes all individuals who participate in meetings, working groups, mailing lists, functions, and other activities that are organized or initiated by ISOC, the IESG, or the IAB under the general designation of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), but solely to the extent of such participation. f. "IETF Documents": RFCs and Internet-Drafts that are used in the IETF Standards Process as defined in 1(g). This is identical to the "IETF stream" defined in . g. "IETF Standards Process": the activities undertaken by the IETF in any of the settings described in 1(a) above. h. "IETF Trust": a trust established under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, USA, in order to hold and administer intellectual property rights for the benefit of the IETF. The IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation replaced the IETF Trust in 2025 as the successor organization. i. "Internet-Draft": temporary documents used in the IETF Standards Process. Internet-Drafts are posted on the IETF web site by the IETF Secretariat. As noted in Section 2.2 of RFC 2026, Internet-Drafts have a nominal maximum lifetime of six months in the IETF Secretariat's public directory. j. "Legend Instructions": the standardized text that is maintained by the IETF Trust and is included in IETF Documents and the instructions and requirements for including that standardized text in IETF Documents. The text and instructions are posted from time to time at http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info. k. "RFC": the publication series used by the IETF among others. RFCs are published by the RFC Editor. Although RFCs may be superseded in whole or in part by subsequent RFCs, the text of an RFC is not altered once published in RFC form. (See Section 2.1.) l. "Reasonably and personally known": something an individual knows personally or, because of the job the individual holds, would reasonably be expected to know. This wording is used to indicate that an organization cannot purposely keep an individual in the dark about certain information just to avoid the disclosure requirement. m. "Non-IETF documents": Internet-Drafts that are submitted to the RFC Editor independently of the IETF Standards Process. (See Section 4.) n. "IETF Intellectual Property Management": IETF IPM, the role of holding and administering the intellectual property rights for the IETF. o. "IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation": IETF IPMC, A Delaware corporation established in 2023 as the legal entity supporting the IETF IPM role and the successor entity to the IETF Trust.

Introduction In all matters of copyright and document procedures, the intent is to benefit the Internet community and the public at large, while respecting the legitimate rights of others. Under the laws of most countries and current international treaties (for example the " Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Work" ), authors obtain numerous rights in the works they produce automatically upon producing them. These rights include copyrights, moral rights, and other rights. In many cases, if the author produces a work within the scope of his or her employment, most of those rights are usually assigned to the employer, either by operation of law or, in many cases, under contract. (The Berne Convention names some rights as "inalienable", which means that the author retains them in all cases.) In order for Contributions to be used within the IETF Standards Process, including when they are published as Internet-Drafts or RFCs, certain limited rights must be granted to the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation (IPMC) , which then grants the necessary rights to the IETF. In addition, Contributors must make representations to the IETF IPMC and the IETF regarding their ability to grant these rights. Section 1 provides definitions used in these policies. Sections 3 and 4 of this document explain the rationale for these provisions. Sections 1, 2, 5, and 6 of this document are normative, the other sections are informative. RFC 3979 BCP79 deals with rights, including possible patent rights, in technologies developed or specified as part of the IETF Standards Process. This document is not intended to address those issues. This memo obsoletes RFCs , and and, with RFC 3979 BCP79 and , replaces Section 10 of RFC 2026 . This document is not intended as legal advice. Readers are advised to consult their own legal advisors if they would like a legal interpretation of their rights or the rights of the IETF IPMC in any Contributions they make.

No Retroactive Effect This memo does not retroactively obtain additional rights from Contributions that predate the date that the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation announces the adoption of these procedures.

IETF Trust Successor IETF Intellectual Propery Management Corporation In 2025 the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation (IETF IPMC) replaced the IETF Trust providing intellectual property management to the IETF. The rights granted and held by the IETF Trust were assigned to the IETF IPMC. Mentions of the IETF Trust in this memo and prior versions should be understood to now refer to the IETF IPMC.

Changes from RFC5378 This document does not change the IETF intellectual property rights from what is described in other than to update mentions of the IETF Trust with the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation and references and links previously to the IETF Trust website to the IETF IPMC website.

Exposition of Why These Procedures Are the Way They Are

Rights Granted in Contributions The IETF IPMC and the IETF must obtain the right to publish an IETF Contribution as an RFC or an Internet-Draft from the Contributors. A primary objective of this policy is to obtain from the document authors only the non-exclusive rights that are needed to develop and publish IETF Documents and to use IETF Contributions in the IETF Standards Process and potentially elsewhere. The authors retain all other rights, but cannot withdraw the above rights from the IETF IPMC and the IETF. It is important to note that under this document, Contributors are required to grant certain rights to the IETF IPMC (see Section 5.3.), which holds all IETF-related intellectual property on behalf of the IETF community. The IETF IPMC will, in turn, grant a sublicense of these rights to all IETF participants for use in the IETF Standards Process (see Section 5.4.). This sublicense is necessary for the standards development work of the IETF to continue. In addition, the IETF IPMC may grant certain other sublicenses of the rights that it is granted under this document. In granting such other sublicenses, the IETF IPMC will be guided and bound by documents such as .

Rights to Use Contributions It is important that the IETF receive assurances from all Contributors that they have the authority to grant the IETF the rights that they claim to grant because, under the laws of most countries and applicable international treaties, copyright rights come into existence when a work of authorship is created (but see Section 3.5 below regarding public domain documents), and the IETF cannot make use of IETF Contributions if it does not have sufficient rights with respect to these copyright rights. The IETF and its participants would run a greater risk of liability to the owners of these rights without this assurance. To this end, the IETF asks Contributors to give the assurances in Section 5.6 below. These assurances are requested, however, only to the extent of the Contributor's reasonable and personal knowledge. (See Section 1(l).)

Right to Produce Derivative Works The IETF needs to be able to evolve IETF Documents in response to experience gained in the deployment of the technologies described in such IETF Documents, to incorporate developments in research, and to react to changing conditions on the Internet and other IP networks. The IETF may also decide to permit others to develop derivative works based on Contributions. In order to do this, the IETF must be able to produce derivatives of its documents; thus, the IETF must obtain the right from Contributors to produce derivative works. Note that the right to produce translations is required before any Contribution can be published as an RFC, to ensure the widest possible distribution of the material in RFCs. The right to produce derivative works, in addition to translations, is required for all IETF Standards Track documents and for most IETF non-Standards Track documents. There are two exceptions to this requirement: documents describing proprietary technologies and documents that are republications of the work of other standards organizations. The right to produce derivative works must be granted in order for an IETF working group to accept a Contribution as a working group document or otherwise work on it. For non-working group Contributions where the Contributor requests publication as a Standards Track RFC, the right to produce derivative works must be granted before the IESG will issue an IETF Last Call and, for most non-Standards Track, non-working group Contributions, before the IESG will consider the Internet-Draft for publication. Occasionally a Contributor may not want to grant publication rights or the right to produce derivative works before finding out if a Contribution has been accepted for development in the IETF Standards Process. In these cases, the Contributor may include a limitation on the right to make derivative works in the form specified in the Legend Instructions. A working group can discuss the Contribution with the aim to decide if it should become a working group document, even though the right to produce derivative works or to publish the Contribution as an RFC has not yet been granted. However, if the Contribution is accepted for development, the Contributor must resubmit the Contribution without the limitation notices before a working group can formally adopt the Contribution as a working group document. The IETF Trust may establish different policies for granting sublicenses with respect to different types of Contributions and content within Contributions (such as executable code versus descriptive text or references to third-party materials). The IETF Trust's policies concerning the granting of sublicenses to make derivative works will be guided by RFC . The IETF has historically encouraged organizations to publish details of their technologies, even when the technologies are proprietary, because understanding how existing technology is being used helps when developing new technology. But organizations that publish information about proprietary technologies are frequently not willing to have the IETF produce revisions of the technologies and then possibly claim that the IETF version is the "new version" of the organization's technology. Organizations that feel this way can specify that a Contribution be published with the other rights granted under this document but may withhold the right to produce derivative works other than translations. In addition, IETF Documents frequently make normative references to standards or recommendations developed by other standards organizations. Since the publications of some standards organizations are not public documents, it can be quite helpful to the IETF to republish, with the permission of the other standards organization, some of these documents as RFCs so that the IETF community can have open access to them to better understand what they are referring to. In these cases, the RFCs can be published without the right for the IETF to produce derivative works. In both of the above cases, in which the production of derivative works is excluded, the Contributor must include a special legend in the Contribution, as specified in the Legend Instructions, in order to notify IETF participants about this restriction.

Rights to Use Trademarks Contributors may wish to seek trademark or service mark protection on any terms that are coined or used in their Contributions. The IETF makes no judgment about the validity of any such trademark rights. However, the IETF requires each Contributor, under the licenses described in Section 5.3 below, to grant the IETF IPMC a perpetual license to use any such trademarks or service marks solely in exercising rights to reproduce, publish, discuss, and modify the IETF Contribution. This license does not authorize the IETF or others to use any trademark or service mark in connection with any product or service offering.

Contributions Not Subject to Copyright Certain documents, including those produced by the U.S. government and those which are in the public domain, may not be protected by the same copyright and other legal rights as other documents. Nevertheless, we ask each Contributor to grant to the IETF the same rights he or she would grant, and to make the same representations, as though the IETF Contribution were protected by the same legal rights as other documents, and as though the Contributor could be able to grant these rights. We ask for these grants and representations only to the extent that the Contribution may be protected. We believe they are necessary to protect the ISOC, the IETF IPMC, the IETF, the IETF Standards Process, and all IETF participants, and because the IETF does not have the resources or wherewithal to make any independent investigation as to the actual proprietary status of any document submitted to it.

Copyright in RFCs As noted above, Contributors to the IETF (or their employers) retain ownership of the copyright in their Contributions. This includes Internet-Drafts and all other Contributions made within the IETF Standards Process (e.g., via e-mail, oral comment, and otherwise). However, it is important that the IETF (through the IETF IPMC) own the copyright in documents that are published as RFCs (other than Informational RFCs and RFCs that are submitted as RFC Editor Contributions). Ownership of the copyright in an RFC does not diminish the Contributors' rights in their underlying contributions, but it does prevent anyone other than the IETF IPMC (and its licensees) from republishing or modifying an RFC in RFC format. In this respect, Contributors are treated the same as anybody else: though they may extract and republish their own Contributions without limitation, they may not do so in the RFC format used by the IETF. And while this principle (which is included in Section 5.9 below) may appear to be new to the IETF, it actually reflects historical practice and has been observed for many years through the inclusion of an ISOC or IETF Trust copyright notice on all RFC documents since the publication of .

Non-IETF Documents This document only relates to Contributions made as part of the IETF Processes. Other documents that are referred to as Internet-Drafts and RFCs may be submitted to and published by the RFC Editor independently of the IETF Standards Process. Such documents are not covered by this document, unless the controlling entity for that document stream, as described in chooses to apply these rules. Non-IETF Contributions must be marked appropriately as described in the Legend Instructions. See the RFC Editor web page for information about the policies concerning rights in RFC Editor Documents; for other document streams, the controlling entity must be contacted. See Section 11 for a declaration from the IAB on this matter.

Rights in Contributions

General Policy By submission of a Contribution, each person actually submitting the Contribution and each named co-Contributor is deemed to have read and understood the rules and requirements set forth in this document. Each Contributor is deemed, by the act of submitting a Contribution, to enter into a legally-binding agreement to comply with the terms and conditions set forth in this document. The Contributor is further deemed to have agreed that he/she has obtained the necessary permissions to enter into such an agreement from any party that the Contributor reasonably and personally knows may have rights in the Contribution, including, but not limited to, the Contributor's sponsor or employer. No further acknowledgment, signature, or other action is required to bind a Contributor to these terms and conditions. The operation of the IETF and the work conducted by its many participants is dependent on such agreement by each Contributor, and each IETF participant expressly relies on the agreement of each Contributor to the terms and conditions set forth in this document.

Confidentiality Obligations No information or document that is subject to any requirement of confidentiality or any restriction on its dissemination may be submitted as a Contribution or otherwise considered in any part of the IETF Standards Process, and there must be no assumption of any confidentiality obligation with respect to any Contribution. Each Contributor agrees that any statement in a Contribution, whether generated automatically or otherwise, that states or implies that the Contribution is confidential or subject to any privilege, can be disregarded for all purposes, and will be of no force or effect.

Rights Granted by Contributors to the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is protected by copyright or other rights of authorship, the Contributor and each named co-Contributor grant a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide, sublicensable right and license to the IETF IPMC under all such copyrights and other rights in the Contribution: a. to copy, publish, display, and distribute the Contribution, in whole or in part, b. to prepare translations of the Contribution into languages other than English, in whole or in part, and to copy, publish, display, and distribute such translations or portions thereof, c. to modify or prepare derivative works (in addition to translations) that are based on or incorporate all or part of the Contribution, and to copy, publish, display, and distribute such derivative works, or portions thereof unless explicitly disallowed in the notices contained in a Contribution (in the form specified by the Legend Instructions), and d. to reproduce any trademarks, service marks, or trade names which are included in the Contribution solely in connection with the reproduction, distribution, or publication of the Contribution and derivative works thereof as permitted by this Section 5.3, provided that when reproducing Contributions, trademark and service mark identifiers used in the Contribution, including TM and (R), will be preserved.

Sublicenses by the IETF IPMC The IETF IPMC will sublicense the rights granted to it under Section 5.3 to all IETF participants for use within the IETF Standards Process. This license is expressly granted under a license agreement issued by the IETF Trust, which can be found at http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info. This license is expressly granted under a license agreement issued by the IETF IPMC and must contain a pointer to the full IETF IPMC agreement. In addition, the IETF IPMC may grant additional sublicenses of the licenses granted to it hereunder. In doing so, the IETF IPMC will comply with the guidance provided under .

No Patent License The licenses granted in Section 5.3 shall not be deemed to grant any right under any patent, patent application, or other similar intellectual property right disclosed by the Contributor under BCP 79 or otherwise.

Representations and Warranties With respect to each Contribution, each Contributor represents that, to the best of his or her knowledge and ability: a. The Contribution properly acknowledges all Contributors, including Indirect Contributors. b. No information in the Contribution is confidential, and the IETF, IETF Trust, IETF IPMC, ISOC, and its affiliated organizations may freely disclose any information in the Contribution. c. There are no limits to the Contributor's ability to make the grants, acknowledgments, and agreements herein that are reasonably and personally known to the Contributor. d. The Contributor has not intentionally included in the Contribution any material that is defamatory or untrue or which is illegal under the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Contributor has his or her principal place of business or residence. e. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and other proprietary names used in the Contribution that are reasonably and personally known to the Contributor are clearly designated as such where reasonable.

No Duty to Publish The Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, acknowledges that the IETF has no duty to publish or otherwise use or disseminate any Contribution. The IETF reserves the right to withdraw or cease using any Contribution that does not comply with the requirements of this Section 5.

Trademarks Contributors who claim trademark rights in terms used in their IETF Contributions are requested to state specifically what conditions apply to implementers of the technology relative to the use of such trademarks. Such statements should be submitted in the same way as is done for other intellectual property claims. (See Section 6.)

Copyright in RFCs Subject to each Contributor's (or its sponsor's) ownership of its underlying Contributions as described in Section 5.6 (which ownership is qualified by the irrevocable licenses granted under Section 5.3), each Contributor hereby acknowledges that the copyright in any RFC in which such Contribution is included, other than an RFC that is an RFC Editor Contribution, shall be owned by the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation. Such Contributor shall be deemed to assign to the IETF IPMC such Contributor's copyright interest in the collective work constituting such RFC upon the submission of such RFC for publication, and acknowledges that a copyright notice acknowledging the IETF IPMC's ownership of the copyright in such RFC will be included in the published RFC.

Contributors' Retention of Rights Although Contributors provide specific rights to the IETF, it is not intended that this should deprive them of their right to exploit their Contributions. To underscore this principle, the IETF IPMC is directed to issue a license or assurance to Contributors, which confirms that they may each make use of their Contributions as published in an RFC in any way they wish, subject only to the restriction that no Contributor has the right to represent any document as an RFC, or equivalent of an RFC, if it is not a full and complete copy or translation of the published RFC.

Legends, Notices and Other Standardized Text in IETF Documents The IETF requires that certain standardized text be reproduced verbatim in certain IETF Documents (including copies, derivative works, and translations of IETF Documents). Some of this standardized text may be mandatory (e.g., copyright notices and disclaimers that must be included in all RFCs) and some may be optional (e.g., limitations on the right to make derivative works). The text itself, as well as the rules that explain when and how it must be used, is contained in the Legend Instructions. The Legend Instructions may be updated from time to time, and the version of the standardized text that must be included in IETF Documents is that which was posted in the Legend Instructions on the date of publication. The IETF reserves the right to refuse to publish Contributions that do not include the legends and notices required by the Legend Instructions. It is important to note that each Contributor grants the IETF IPMC rights pursuant to this document and the policies described herein. The legends and notices included in certain written Contributions such as Internet-Drafts do not themselves convey any rights. They are simply included to inform the reader (whether or not part of the IETF) about certain legal rights and limitations associated with such documents. It is also important to note that additional copyright notices are not permitted in IETF Documents except in the case where such document is the product of a joint development effort between the IETF and another standards development organization or is a republication of the work of another standards development organization. Such exceptions must be approved on an individual basis by the IAB.

Changes since RFC5378 This document does not change the intellectual property polices from , those remain as they previously were. The edits made are replacing mentions of the IETF Trust with the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation (IPMC) and mentions of the IETF Trust website with the IETF IPMC website as needed to recogninzed the change from the IETF Trust to the IETF IPMC.

Security Considerations This memo relates to the IETF process, not any particular technology. There are security considerations when adopting any technology, but there are no known issues of security with IETF Contribution rights policies.

IANA Considerations This document has no IANA actions.

References Normative References This document updates RFC 3978 "IETF Rights in Contributions" to recognize that the IETF Trust is now the proper custodian of all IETF-related intellectual property rights. This document does not constrain how the IETF Trust exercises those rights. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. The IETF policies about rights in Contributions to the IETF are designed to ensure that such Contributions can be made available to the IETF and Internet communities while permitting the authors to retain as many rights as possible. This memo details the IETF policies on rights in Contributions to the IETF. It also describes the objectives that the policies are designed to meet. This memo updates RFC 2026, and, with RFC 3979, replaces Section 10 of RFC 2026. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Contributors grant intellectual property rights to the IETF. The IETF Trust holds and manages those rights on behalf of the IETF. The Trustees of the IETF Trust are responsible for that management. This management includes granting the licenses to copy, implement, and otherwise use IETF Contributions, among them Internet-Drafts and RFCs. The Trustees of the IETF Trust accepts direction from the IETF regarding the rights to be granted. This document describes the desires of the IETF regarding outbound rights to be granted in IETF Contributions. This memo provides information for the Internet community. 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 3978, 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. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. The IETF policies about rights in Contributions to the IETF are designed to ensure that such Contributions can be made available to the IETF and Internet communities while permitting the authors to retain as many rights as possible. This memo details the IETF policies on rights in Contributions to the IETF. It also describes the objectives that the policies are designed to meet. This memo obsoletes RFCs 3978 and 4748 and, with BCP 79 and RFC 5377, replaces Section 10 of RFC 2026. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. This memo documents the process used by the Internet community for the standardization of protocols and procedures. It defines the stages in the standardization process, the requirements for moving a document between stages and the types of documents used during this process. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. This document updates BCP 101 to take account of the new IETF Intellectual Property Trust. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. In many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. RFC 2119 specifies common key words that may be used in protocol specifications. This document aims to reduce the ambiguity by clarifying that only UPPERCASE usage of the key words have the defined special meanings. Internet Architecture Board This document describes the framework for an RFC Series and an RFC Editor function that incorporate the principles of organized community involvement and accountability that has become necessary as the Internet technical community has grown, thereby enabling the RFC Series to continue to fulfill its mandate. This memo provides information for the Internet community. Informative References n.d.

Acknowledgments The editor would like to acknowledge the contributions of Scott Bradner and Jorge L. Contreras as the editors of RFC5378 and the IETF IPR Working Group that developed RFC5378.

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