Re: ALERT -- IEEE stinks up the house! ...

John,
boy are you confused! The copyright assignment to the IEEE is NEVER done by
an individual employee of a company that happens to be a member of the WG.
It is done on a form letter that has been approved by IEEE legal counsel by
the legal department of the company assigning the copyright. In exceptional
cases, like that of 1364 Verilog, where the original standard was owned by a
consortium and not by a company, it was the Chair of OVI, with the full
approval of the Board of Directors, that assigned the copyright. The same
will have to be true for SystemC, where OSCI owns the copyright to the
standard since SystemC is not an open standard, it is an administered
standard that accepts open contributions.
Of course you can employ whichever intent you choose in reading what Dennis
states, but in this case your intent to discredit the procedures of the IEEE
has led you to some very wrong conclusions. Common sense indicates, after
all, that the IEEE would not have stayed in existence for these many years
if they had been as naive as you paint them in conducting business. I can
assure all of the DASC members that in the case of copyright and patent law,
the IEEE is extremely well advised.
Gabe Moretti
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Michael Williams" <jwill@astragate.net>
To: "IEEE DASC" <stds-dasc@eda.org>
Cc: <vhdl-200x-ft@eda.org>; "John Cooley"
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: ALERT -- IEEE stinks up the house! ...

> Hi Dennis.
>
> According to U. S. copyright law, all original works in
> fixed format, such as writing, are copyrighted automatically
> and are owned by the author. I prefer a system in which
> the author must affix a copyright notice, but, that's
> the current law.
>
> Unless the WG Chair has a power of attorney from each author
> in a WG, the Chair has no power to assign copyright in
> the work of others to IEEE. Such an assignment would be
> bogus and unlawful.
>
> I read your quotes below, but, in my opinion, WG members are
> not "hired" by IEEE, and a statement from the Chair to the
> contrary is meaningless in the absence of a contractual
> assignment by each member or a power of attorney. Civil
> suits by undercompensated authors almost always are won
> (movie script writers being a well-known example), even in
> the presence of a valid assignment contract.
>
> There may actually be a criminal offense, in view of
> DMCA and other attempts to criminalize
> miappropriation of intellectual property. Is the
> IEEE rule you quote below an attempt to circumvent
> authors' copyright protection under U. S. law?
>
> You can find the copyright law online as Title 17 of the
> U. S. Code. I can dig up a link, if anyone is interested.
>
> Calling someone an employee doesn't make them one, and
> failing to pay a salary or even a contractual fee,
> makes such claims false, in my opinion.
>
> "Understanding" that IEEE falsely is claiming to have
> hired a WG member is not equivalent to a copyright
> assignment by such a member. Members doing the work
> anyway, can claim not to have read the P&P, to have forgotten
> it, or to have recognized it as a false and ineffectual claim.
>
> Aside,
> this whole debate would not have arisen if DASC(-SC) had
> not been threatening to disenfranchise members by levying
> what is in effect an exhorbitant poll tax on standards
> policy voting.
>
> I would prefer to drop the copyright issue and return to
> something under IEEE control: Lowering expenses, and
> hopefully dues, for DASC, DASC-SC, and probably SA.
> --
> John
> jwill@AstraGate.net
> John Michael Williams
>
> Brophy, Dennis wrote:
> > Tim,
> >
> > You may wish to familiarize yourself more with the IEEE P&Ps. You can
get a copy of the IEEE-SA Operations Manual at
http://standards.ieee.org/sa/sa-om.pdf
<http://standards.ieee.org/sa/sa-om.pdf> . You will find that when the
chair of the committee, Steve Bailey in the case of VHDL, submits the PAR
form, they will sign the Copyright Agreement acknowledging that the proposed
standard constitutes a "work made for hire." It may be that Steve has not
reviewed these details with the VHDL Working Group. But then again, it may
have been assumed that everyone participating in the standard has been given
a copy of the P&Ps and have read or reviewed the chain of IEEE policies to
understand this. Since this important point may be missed by all
participating in DASC standards, I've cc'ed the DASC reflector.
> >
> > I have extracted 6.1.1 from the IEEE-SA Operation Manual which states
this requirement. Since no group wishes to do work on previously
copyrighted material that is included in a standard, permission in the DASC
standards has generally been secured at the beginning of the project. This
is not a requirement, but certainly nobody wishes to waste their time to
only have a contributor refuse to assign copyright.
> >
> > 6.1.1 Project Authorization Request (PAR)
> >
> > As part of the initial PAR procedure, the committee or working group
shall appoint a chair (or official
> > reporter) who shall sign a Copyright Agreement acknowledging that the
proposed standard constitutes a
> > "work made for hire" as defined by the Copyright Act, and that as to any
work not so defined, any rights or
> > interest in the copyright to the standards publication is transferred to
the IEEE. Except as noted below, the
> > IEEE is the sole copyright owner of all material included in the
standard.
> >
> > At the time of PAR completion, any previously copyrighted material
intended for inclusion shall be
> > identified. The working group is responsible for receiving written
permission to use all copyrighted material
> > prior to RevCom submittal. Sample form letters are available in the IEEE
Standards Style Manual.
> >
> > Within the IEEE-SA Operation Manual, one will also find restrictions
that are placed on a working group as to what it can accept during its
operation. We all know that we never sign NDAs to participate in the
standard committees and that the groups cannot accept confidential
information or copyrighted information. This extends beyond what is placed
into a draft standard and includes such things as email, but is broad to
include any communication. The relevant clause to reference is 4.1.1.5.
Again, a working group can incorporate copyrighted material in a draft, but
before it is approved by RevCom, copyright release and/or assignment is
required. As I have seen the DASC operate in the past, these copyright
releases and assignments are generally made in advance of approval so the
owner cannot hold a standard hostage at the end of the development process.
> >
> > 4.1.1.5 Confidentiality Statements and Copyright Notices on
Communications
> >
> > The IEEE-SA Standards Board and its committees operate in an open
manner. To that end, no material
> > submitted to the IEEE-SA Standards Board or its committees will be
accepted or considered if it contains
> > any statement that places any burden on the recipient(s) with respect to
confidentiality or copyright. Any
> > communication, including electronic mail, containing language with such
restrictive wording will not be
> > accepted or considered.
> >
> > It should be noted that this policy does not apply to IEEE copyrighted
materials, such as draft standards. In
> > the event that copyrighted materials are to be incorporated in an IEEE
standard, an acceptable copyright
> > release or assignment must be obtained from the copyright owner prior to
approval of the standard by the
> > IEEE-SA Standards Board.
> >
> > I would also like to clarify the status of eda.org. eda.org is owned by
Accellera and operated for the good of industry and the public to foster
standards development. In addition to paying to keep the site active and
accessible, we are grateful for the numerous sysadmin volunteers, Sun
Microsystems for the donations of hardware for over a decade, the IBIS team
for additional disk storage and Stanford University to allowing us to keep
the machine located at their campus. (Accellera does pays Stanford for
network connectivity, power, etc.) We maintain a long-standing
relationship with the IEEE Standards Association, IEEE Computer Society's
Design Automation Standards Committee, IEEE Circuits and Systems CANDE
group, Geneva based IEC TC93 groups, the Electronic Design Process
Subcommittee (EDPS) of the IEEE Design Automation Technical Committee
(DATC), and more who have located groups at this website. Accellera would
not want this site abused by anyone to circumvent the
> es
> > tablished practices of these well respected groups.
> >
> >>From this email, and other messages to the VHDL reflector and DASC
reflector I sense a great deal of frustration on standards development. We
all benefit from standards. Consumers are offered choice of interoperable
solutions, competition is based on features, price, implementation, etc. and
an assurance that your data is portable and in a format not controlled by a
single vendor. I can only imagine what design life would be like if we went
back to the pre-EDIF days when every company had their own format and design
data was barely interoperable.
> >
> > I stand by my previous email that a conversation with the IEEE-SA is
more in order to explore options.
> >
> > And, this is one of the reasons I believe corporate/entity participation
in the DASC standards groups is a benefit. The DASC has very weak business
connections to the IEEE-SA. I have attempted to broaden this line of
thinking in the DASC and I understand it resulted in a religious war.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Dennis
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-vhdl-200x-ft@eda.org [mailto:owner-vhdl-200x-ft@eda.org
<mailto:owner-vhdl-200x-ft@eda.org> ] On Behalf Of Tim Davis
> > Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2004 8:35 PM
> > To: David Bishop
> > Cc: Peter Ashenden; vhdl-200x-ft@eda.org; John Cooley
> > Subject: ALERT -- IEEE stinks up the house! [Was Re: [vhdl-200x-ft] New
version of VHDL code]
> >
> > David,
> >
> > You should immediately, and without reservation, place your own
copyright on every single one of those files which you personally created.
Especially the floating point work developed for both Verilog and VHDL.
> >
> > IMMEDIATELY (with emphasis)
> >
> > Then repost them on the public, non-ieee EDA.ORG web server as a giant
zip file (or even better post them to Sourceforge). As far as I know, you
haven't published the code directly to the listserver and EDA.ORG isn't
owned by the IEEE. Let the IEEE lawyers come forward. I think they would
promply loose their case and perhaps 50% of the IEEE membership after they
are found guilty of attempting to steal your hard work for their own profit.
> >
> > These are not a work made for hire and the IEEE has absolutely no rights
in them. If this Claudio Stanziola person continues with this reprehensible
line of Bulls**t then I think every single one of us should drop our IEEE
membership on the spot, write editorials to all the major EE magazines, and
generally scream FOUL at the top of our lungs.
> >
> > In the event that Mr. Stanziola believes me to be wrong on this point
then I challenge him to publish the contract with your signature on it
stating that you are developing materials for them in a work made for hire
and have turned over copyrights to them for your intellectual property.
> >
> > --
> > Aspen Logic, Inc.
> > by: Tim Davis, President
> >
> > David Bishop wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Peter Ashenden wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>David and colleagues,
> >>>
> >>>I received a note from Claudio Stanziola, the IEEE-SA's IP and legal
> >>>person,
> >>>regarding the posting of the package files. He indicated that public
> >>>posting of IEEE copyrighted material is against IEEE policy, and
> >>>requested
> >>>that the material be kept in a protected area.
> >>
> >>
> >>I feel very strongly that these packages NEED to be part of the public
> >>domain. If they are not, all of our hard work on VHDL-200X-FT won't
> >>get used. The reason that it took "numeric_std" so long to be
> >>adopted was because vendors did not have free access to the source code.
> >>
> >>
> >>>I've asked him for clarification of what kinds of material should be
> >>>protected and to whom the material should be accessible. I'm still
> >>>awaiting
> >>>a reply.
> >>
> >>
> >>Please. I feel that I have made a major mistake in donating the
> >>fixed point and floating point packages if this is the case.
> >>
> >>
> >>>Meanwhile, please be aware that we may be required to take action to
> >>>limit
> >>>access in some way. I'll advise as soon as I can.
> >>
> >>
> >>Limiting access may make it impossible to actually verify these
packages.
> >>I have several thousand lines of test vectors, just for the updates to
> >>the current packages, and they are not exhaustive. We will need to make
> >>them publicly available not only for debugging, but to get them used and
> >>our new standard accepted.
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> John
> jwill@AstraGate.net
> John Michael Williams
>
Received on Mon Aug 9 08:46:10 2004