Internet-Draft | IETF Antitrust Guidelines | August 2021 |
Halpern, et al. | Expires 3 March 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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This Internet-Draft will expire on 3 March 2022.¶
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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, participants should not discuss the following topics:¶
While not all discussions of these topics would necessarily be antitrust violations, prudence suggests that avoiding these topics altogether best mitigates antitrust risks.¶
In addition to avoiding specific topics of discussion, IETF participants, particularly those in an IETF leadership position, should not engage in the following:¶
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.¶