Internet-Draft | IETF Antitrust Guidelines | November 2021 |
Halpern, et al. | Expires 6 May 2022 | [Page] |
This document provides guidance for IETF participants on compliance with antitrust laws and how to reduce antitrust risks in connection with IETF activities.¶
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Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.¶
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 6 May 2022.¶
Copyright (c) 2021 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 (https://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 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.¶
Standards development frequently requires collaboration between competitors. Cooperation among competitors can spark concerns about antitrust law or competition law violations (antitrust law and competition law are used here synonymously). Certain actions taken by a company that holds a dominant market position can similarly spark concerns about competition law violations. This document provides guidance for IETF participants about how to reduce antitrust risks in connection with IETF activities.¶
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 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
The IETF does not provide legal advice to participants, and instead encourages participants to obtain independent legal advice as needed. This document does not contain legal advice.¶
All IETF participants must behave lawfully when engaged in IETF activities, including by following applicable antitrust laws.¶
Compliance with the BCPs that document the established rules and norms of the IETF facilitates compliance with antitrust law, as the IETF structure and processes are intended to mitigate antitrust risks. As a reminder, participants are already required to comply with the following policies documented in the BCPs:¶
As the IETF is a standards development environment where representatives from competitors are highly likely to be present, the following additional guidelines are recommended to avoid the possibility of participants violating antitrust laws.¶
Participation in the IETF should not be conditioned upon the agreement of the participant to use any output of the IETF.¶
There should be no agreement among participants to implement or to adhere to IETF standards, or any discussions as to when participants will begin to offer products conforming to IETF standards.¶
IETF participants should not condition or discuss conditioning the implementation of an IETF standard on the implementer's use of products or services from a particular supplier.¶
IETF participants should not use IETF standards to exclude suppliers or competitors from the marketplace.¶
It is acceptable for IETF participants to discuss the likelihood that adoption of a particular standard would subject implementers to a greater or lesser risk of patent litigation, but such discussions should be conducted with caution and only after consultation with the participants' respective legal counsel.¶
IETF participants should avoid the exchange of any proprietary business information that is not necessary to the activities of the IETF. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, IETF participants should not discuss:¶
No IETF participants should engage in, direct, or encourage other IETF participants to engage in, the use of IETF facilities for surveys of customers or gathering of statistical data about market requirements. However IETF participants may make presentations about broad market potential or market requirements for informational purposes.¶
IETF participants who are employed by or otherwise represent a company that may be considered to be in a dominant market position should not improperly use the authority of an IETF leadership position to suppress permissible discussions or proposals from a competitor.¶
Participants should report potential antitrust concerns in the context of IETF activities to through the following channels: IETF Chair (chair@ietf.org), the IETF LLC executive director (exec-director@ietf.org), the IETF legal counsel (legal@ietf.org), or via the IETF LLC whistleblower service.¶
No values are assigned in this document, no registries are created, and there is no action assigned to the IANA by this document.¶
This document may be considered to document means to avoid risks to the IETF and IETF participants related to antitrust. One may consider those to be security considerations. Other than that, this document introduces no known security aspects to the IETF or IETF participants.¶