Note Well:

All documents or other artifacts submitted to the GridForge repository are subject to the Intellectual Property policy of the GGF. Submitting a document constitutes your agreement with the policy below. If you do not agree with this policy, please do not submit your document.

GGF Intellectual Property Guidelines
GGF intellectual property right management process is intended to mirror the intellectual property rights and procedures associated with the Internet Standards Process, as outlined in RFC2026, Section 10. The section below is a modified excerpt from RFC2026.

In all matters of intellectual property rights and procedures, the intention is to benefit the Grid community and the public at large, while respecting the legitimate rights of others.

A Contributions

Contributions include verbal statements in GGF meetings, as well as written and electronic communications made at any time or place, which are addressed to: " the GGF plenary session, " any GGF working group or portion thereof, " the GFSG, or any member thereof on behalf of the GFSG, " the GFAC, or any member thereof on behalf of the GFAC, " any GGF mailing list, including any working group or research group list, or any other list functioning under GGF auspices, " the GFD Editor or the GWD process

Statements made outside of a GGF meeting, mailing list or other function, that are clearly not intended to be input to an GGF activity, group or function, are not subject to these provisions.

By submission of a contribution, each person actually submitting the contribution is deemed to agree to the following terms and conditions on his or her own behalf, on behalf of the organization (if any) he or she represents and on behalf of the owners of any propriety rights in the contribution. Where a submission identifies contributors in addition to the contributor(s) who provide the actual submission, the actual submitter(s) represent that each other named contributor was made aware of and agreed to accept the same terms and conditions on his or her own behalf, on behalf of any organization he or she may represent and any known owner of any proprietary rights in the contribution.

B Confidentiality Obligations

No contribution that is subject to any requirement of confidentiality or any restriction on its dissemination may be considered in any part of the GGF document process, and there must be no assumption of any confidentiality obligation with respect to any such contribution.

C Rights and Permissions

In the course of its work developing recommendations, GGF receives contributions in various forms and from many persons. To best facilitate the dissemination of these contributions, it is necessary to understand any intellectual property rights (IPR) relating to the contributions.

1. Some works (e.g. works of the U.S. Government) are not subject to copyright. However, to the extent that the submission is or may be subject to copyright, the contributor, the organization he or she represents (if any) and the owners of any proprietary rights in the contribution, grant an unlimited perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and license to the GGF under any copyrights in the contribution. This license includes the right to copy, publish and distribute the contribution in any way, and to prepare derivative works that are based on or incorporate all or part of the contribution, the license to such derivative works to be of the same scope as the license of the original contribution.

2. The contributor acknowledges that the GGF has no duty to publish or otherwise use or disseminate any contribution.

3. The contributor grants permission to reference the name(s) and address(es) of the contributor(s) and of the organization(s) he or she represents (if any).

4. The contributor represents that contribution properly acknowledges major contributors.

5. The contributor, the organization (if any) he or she represents and the owners of any proprietary rights in the contribution, agree that no information in the contribution is confidential and that the GGF and its affiliated organizations may freely disclose any information in the contribution.

6. The contributor represents that he or she has disclosed the existence of any proprietary or intellectual property rights in the contribution that are reasonably and personally known to the contributor. The contributor does not represent that he or she personally knows of all potentially pertinent proprietary and intellectual property rights owned or claimed by the organization he or she represents (if any) or third parties.

7. The contributor represents that there are no limits to the contributor's ability to make the grants acknowledgments and agreements above that are reasonably and personally known to the contributor.

By ratifying this description of the GGF process the GGF warrants that it will not inhibit the traditional open and free access to GGF documents for which license and right have been assigned according to the procedures set forth in this section, including GWD's and GFD's. This warrant is perpetual and will not be revoked by the GGF or its successors or assigns.

Where any patents, patent applications, or other proprietary rights are known, or claimed, with respect to any GGF document, and brought to the attention of the GFSG, the GFSG shall not advance the document without including in the document a note indicating the existence of such rights, or claimed rights. Where implementations are required before advancement of a specification, only implementations that have, by statement of the implementers, taken adequate steps to comply with any such rights, or claimed rights, shall be considered for the purpose of showing the adequacy of the specification.

The GFSG disclaims any responsibility for identifying the existence of or for evaluating the applicability of any claimed copyrights, patents, patent applications, or other rights in the fulfilling of the its obligations as outlined in the previous paragraph, and will take no position on the validity or scope of any such rights.

Where the GFSG knows of rights, or claimed rights, the GGF secretariat shall attempt to obtain from the claimant of such rights, a written assurance that upon approval by the GFSG of the relevant GGF document(s), any party will be able to obtain the right to implement, use and distribute the technology or works when implementing, using or distributing technology based upon the specific specification(s) under openly specified, reasonable, non-discriminatory terms. The working group or research group proposing the use of the technology with respect to which the proprietary rights are claimed may assist the GGF secretariat in this effort. The results of this procedure shall not affect advancement of document, except that the GFSG may defer approval where a delay may facilitate the obtaining of such assurances. The results will, however, be recorded by the GGF Secretariat, and made available. The GFSG may also direct that a summary of the results be included in any GFD published containing the specification.

C.1 Determination of Reasonable and Non-discriminatory Terms

The GFSG will not make any explicit determination that the assurance of reasonable and non-discriminatory terms for the use of a technology has been fulfilled in practice. It will instead use the normal requirements for the advancement of GGF recommendations track documents to verify that the terms for use are reasonable. If the two unrelated implementations of the specification that are required to advance from Proposed Recommendation to Draft Recommendation have been produced by different organizations or individuals or if the "significant implementation and successful operational experience" required to advance from Draft Recommendation to Recommendation has been achieved the assumption is that the terms must be reasonable and to some degree, non-discriminatory. This assumption may be challenged during the open comment period.

C.2 Notices

The following IPR notice shall be included in all GGF documents:

The GGF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Copies of claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the GGF Secretariat.

The GGF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice this recommendation. Please address the information to the GGF Executive Director.

Explicit statements about IPR should not be included in the document, because including a specific claim implies that the claim is valid and that the listed claims are exhaustive. Once a document has been published as a final GFD there is no mechanism to effectively update the IPR information. Authors should instead provide the GGF secretariat with any explicit statements or potentially relevant claims.