[Asis-standards] Fwd: NISO Board is soliciting member comments on revision to NISO IP Rights Policy

[Mark Needleman]

FYI - send me any comments you have on this

mark

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: NISO Board is soliciting member comments on revision to NISO IP 
Rights Policy
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2012 10:38:58 -0400
From: Todd Carpenter (Gmail) <tcarpenter at niso.org>
To: voting-members at list.niso.org,        NISO Library Standards Alliance 
<lsa-member at list.niso.org>
CC: bod at list.niso.org

Good morning NISO members,

Over the past year, the NISO Board of Directors has been reviewing 
NISO's Intellectual Property (IP) Rights Policies. These policies have 
not been updated in some time and are not currently sufficient to 
address the complexities of the legal issues that affect standards 
development. With the assistance of Andrew Updegrove, an intellectual 
property attorney specializing in standards development organizations 
(SDOs) and standards IP issues, we have drafted a new intellectual 
property rights policy. The NISO Board asks that all NISO members  and 
provide feedback on the draft policy. We have set the document up on our 
website with an online commenting form; it is accessible from 
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?document_id=9541&wg_abbrev=staff.

Andrew has worked with more than 50 SDOs in the development of their IPR 
policies.  The attached draft is consistent with the policies of many 
other organizations in our community and conforms with ANSI's essential 
requirements.

Consistent with NISO's desire for open, broad, and unencumbered 
distribution of NISO standards, the Board has drafted a policy that 
requires that any intellectual property included within an approved NISO 
standard be made available on a Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) 
basis that is also free from any royalty charges. If the holder of any 
intellectual property to be included within a NISO standard wishes to 
charge a royalty, they may petition the NISO Board of Directors for 
special allowance to charge the royalty. If an accommodation between the 
rights holder and the Board cannot be achieved, then the infringing 
intellectual property will be removed from the specification. This 
policy is binding on all participants in NISO standards development 
projects, whether the participant is a representative of a member or 
non-member organization, or is self-employed/retired. Participation in a 
project is deemed assent to these policies, but NISO will also be 
including a click-through agreement requirement for all participants of 
NISO's work on the NISO website back-end, where documents are stored and 
voting takes place.

The Board is putting the revision to this policy before the NISO 
membership for a 45-day period of comment. Only members may submit 
comments.  Please note your membership organization in your comment so 
that we can confirm the comment's source.  If you would like to submit 
confidential comments on the draft, you may do so by emailing the 
comments to nisohq at niso.org. The NISO Board will review these comments 
and then plans to take a final action on the policy in December. If 
approved, the policy will become effective on January 1, 2013.

To help foster a better understanding of this policy, the rationale for 
the change, and its implications, NISO will host a webinar for members 
only to discuss the policy change. We plan to hold this webinar on 
October 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM ET.  Information about how to participate in 
the webinar will be sent to all members the week before the meeting.  We 
ask that members RSVP to let us know who will be on the call, but that 
will not be required. The webinar will be recorded, so if you or others 
at your organization are unable to participate at that time, you can 
listen to the recoding.

The comment period will end on Wednesday, November 14th at 11:59 PM ET. 
   If you have any questions about this policy, the webinar or the 
discussions that took place to this point, please feel free to email me 
and I would be happy to arrange a time to talk with you.

With kindest regards,

Todd Carpenter
Executive Director


==================================
Todd A.  Carpenter
Executive Director

National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
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Baltimore, MD 21211-1948

Main: (301) 654-2512
Toll free: (866) 957-1593
Fax: (410) 685-5278
tcarpenter at niso.org
www.niso.org
skype: tcarpenter410
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