| Internet-Draft | IETF Antitrust Guidelines | October 2022 |
| Halpern, et al. | Expires 24 April 2023 | [Page] |
This document provides guidance for IETF participants on compliance with antitrust laws and how to reduce antitrust risks in connection with IETF activities.¶
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶
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/.¶
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."¶
This Internet-Draft will expire on 24 April 2023.¶
Copyright (c) 2022 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 Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶
Standards development frequently requires collaboration between competitors. Cooperation among competitors can spark concerns about antitrust law or competition law violations. This document provides guidance for IETF participants about how to reduce antitrust risks in connection with IETF activities.¶
"Antitrust law" and "competition law" are used synonymously in this document. "Antitrust" is the word that's used in the US and in several other jurisdictions; "competition law" is the terminology used in Europe and in many other jurisdictions. There can be some nuanced differences between how different jurisdictions address these kinds of legal issues, and sometimes people use the terminology differently to highlight these nuances, but here they are being used as synonyms.¶
The U.S. Department of Justice says that "the goal of the antitrust laws is to protect economic freedom and opportunity by promoting free and fair competition in the marketplace. Competition in a free market benefits consumers through lower prices, better quality and greater choice. Competition provides businesses the opportunity to compete on price and quality, in an open market and on a level playing field, unhampered by anticompetitive restraints." Fundamentally, antitrust or competition laws are designed to facilitate open, fair, robust competition, ultimately to benefit consumers.¶
There are two overlapping areas of concern the IETF has in connection with antitrust compliance:¶
Compliance with the BCPs and other relevant policies that document the established rules and norms of the IETF facilitates compliance with antitrust law, as the IETF structure and processes are designed to mitigate antitrust risks. As a reminder, participants are required to comply with the following policies:¶
The most important recommendation is for IETF participants to rigorously follow all applicable IETF policies as set out in section 3 above.¶
Additionally it is recommended that IETF participants:¶
Some topics are particularly inappropriate for discussion in a standards setting environment where representatives from competitors are likely to be present. These topics include: product pricing, profit margins, business relationships between specific vendors and customers, details about particular supply chains, discussions about particular market opportunities, or employee compensation or benefits. While not all discussions of these topics would necessarily be antitrust violations, prudence suggests that avoiding these topics altogether in the context of collaborative IETF discussions best mitigates antitrust risks for the IETF and its participants.¶
Note that antitrust law reaches beyond these topics, however. For example, any behavior that amounts to an agreement to restrain marketplace competition, or that facilitates monopolization of particular markets, raises potential antitrust risks. Participants must ensure that their conduct does not violate any antitrust laws or regulations.¶
Two topics that can be relevant at times in a standard setting context but that can also raise some competition law risks are:¶
IETF participants should consult with IETF legal counsel and/or other IETF experts as needed to ensure that an investigation of these topics follows established best practices.¶
All IETF participants are expected to behave lawfully when engaged in IETF activities, including by following applicable antitrust law. The IETF does not provide legal advice to participants, and instead recommends that participants obtain independent legal advice as needed. IETF participants should consult with their own counsel when antitrust or competition law-related questions arise.¶
Participants should report potential antitrust concerns in the context of IETF activities 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.¶