ProCom Ad Hoc on Antitrust

[David_Law@xxxxxxxx]

All,

I have been requested to give an update on the activities of the ProCom ad 
hoc on anti-trust since, while not directly a PatCom activity, it is 
related to the proposed changes to the Patent Policy. The ad hoc was 
chartered by ProCom at it's September meeting and it's formation was 
announced during the ProCom report at the IEEE-SA Standards Board meeting 
on Friday 15th September. The ad hoc was chartered with drafting proposed 
wording for the IEEE-SA Operations Manual to:

1) Modify the language in 5.3.8 to bring it into alignment with current 
anti-trust enforcement practices.
2) Align 5.3.8 with the proposed changes to the Patent Policy which 
explicitly allows the distribution of accepted LOAs at WG meetings.

In addition it was also chartered to:

3) Consider developing more extensive anti-trust compliance education 
language for potential inclusion in the Standards Companion or elsewhere.
4) Pointing to this education language in 5.3.8.

I was appointed to chair the ad hoc and the following individuals 
volunteered to participate: Chuck Adams, Jim Hughes, Rich Hulett, Michael 
Lindsay, Amy Marasco, Ron Moore, Chuck Powers, Robert Skitol, from staff 
Karen Kenney, Mary Lynn Nielsen, Dave Ringle.

The ad hoc has come to consensus on a draft for items 1 and 2 and would 
like to offer the members of the PP-DIALOG reflector the opportunity to 
comment on the proposed changes. All comments concerning the attached 
draft must be entered using the PatCom Commenting Tool [ 
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/pp-dialog/comment-tool/index.html ]. These 
comments will then be reviewed by the ad hoc, responded to, and updates 
made to the draft as required. The comments, responses and the resultant 
draft will then be considered at the ProCom Meeting held on Tuesday 
December 4th. The deadline for submission of comments is 11:59PM PST 
Tuesday November 28th, 2006. Please email the output from your commenting 
tool to me at David_Law@3com.com.

We have only just started work on Items 3 and 4 and I believe that these 
items address providing detailed guidance to chairs on this area - the 
output may be another component of the information presented by the chair 
- or something that participants are just made aware of where to access - 
but I don't believe that this is directly related to the patent policy 
slides presented at each meeting which is an action for PatCom to update. 
Regardless I will ensure a period of review is provided through the 
PP-DIALOG reflector for this material once it has been developed by the ad 
hoc.

As always if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,
  David Law

OpsMan_5p3p8.pdf