Business Review Letter
A number of you have expressed interest in the process
for the IEEE-SA’s request for a business review letter, and I wanted to
let you know what the process will be. We have decided to seek the
business review letter from the U.S. Department of Justice. (For
those of you not familiar with the business review letter process, see
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/busreview/procedure.htm.)
I will be working with IEEE-SA senior leadership, senior
staff and counsel to draft the request which we plan to submit no later
than November 15 but possibly sooner. The request will describe the
background, the proposed policy and its key provisions (i.e., ex ante disclosures,
affiliates, and assignees), and the key concerns (e.g., to ensure that
Justice Department would not view the ex ante disclosure provisions of
the policy as a form of price-fixing or otherwise unlawful concerted behavior).
I do not plan to circulate drafts of the letter for comment,
but I want to advise you of two avenues for input in the process. First,
we do want to make sure that our request includes all topics that might
reasonably concern interested parties, so if there are topics or specific
phrasing that you want to suggest, we will consider it (at least if it
is received before November 7). Second, we are preparing a list of
interested persons (with contact information) that we will submit with
our request, so that the Justice Department can contact anyone from whom
it wishes to receive further input. We prepared a tentative list
based on attendance at the 2006 PatCom meetings, but if you want to be
sure that your name is included, please send a note to Dave Ringle (d.ringle@ieee.org),
with your company name and your contact information.
Finally, if you have not seen it already, you should take
a look at the business review letter that the Justice Department issued
this past Monday, October 30, concerning an ex ante disclosure policy of
the VITA standards development group. We would be particularly interested
in knowing if you have a concern about the IEEE policy that is not addressed
in the Justice Department’s VITA letter. (See http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2006/219379.htm)
Thanks again for all of your input throughout this process.
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Don Wright
don@lexmark.com
f.wright@ieee.org / f.wright@computer.org
Director of Standards
Lexmark International INCITS Executive
Board Vice-Chair
C14/082-3
IEEE SA Standards Board Past Chair
740 New Circle Rd IEEE
SASB Patent Committee Chair
Lexington, Ky 40550 Member: IEEE
SA Board of Governors
859-825-4808 (phone) Member: IEEE CS
SAB & W3C AC
603-963-8352 (fax) Director,
IEEE-ISTO
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