This is an archived webpage. For current information about the IETF administrative arrangements, see the IETF Administration LLC website.

Legal

Appeals

The process for appealing decisions is described in BCP 101. If a member of the IETF community questions whether a decision or action of the IAD or the IAOC has been undertaken in accordance with IETF BCPs or IASA operational guidelines, or questions whether the IASA has created and maintained appropriate guidelines, he or she may ask the IAOC for a formal review of the decision or action.

If a member of the community is not satisfied with the IAOC's response to his or her review request, he or she may escalate the issue by appealing the decision or action to the IAB, using the appeals procedures outlined in RFC 2026.

Legal Requests

If obtaining IETF documents from the public sources is not sufficient then parties engaged in litigation relating to technologies that use or incorporate IETF standards may wish to obtain information directly from the IETF, in the form of documents, responses to questions or other tangible items. This is likely to occur when the litigant believes that some activity that occurred within the IETF process [RFC2026], or some intellectual property relating to an IETF standard [RFC3978] [RFC4748] [RFC3979], is directly related to the case in question. The term "documents" is often defined broadly by subpoenas and can include both electronic and hard copy sources, such as working group session attendance lists ("Blue Sheets"), minutes, Internet Drafts, RFCs, and emails.

To obtain such information, the litigant may send a Documentation Request seeking the information to the IETF. Request and response procedures are discussed at Legal Request Procedures.

The IAOC has adopted a Fees Policy for Legal Requests that imposes standard fees to produce information and authenticate documents in response to subpoenas and other legal requests. More information and a schedule of fees can be found here: Fees Policy for Legal Requests 6 September, 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Last Updated 28 August 2018