Simon, 3979 only constrains players who choose to participate in the
IETF. If they do not participate -- worse yet, if they choose not to
participate with the intention of using submarine patents -- there's
nothing the IETF can do. In fact, I'm not convinced that even
conceptually there's anything the IETF could do against
non-participants, since no license is needed to implement an IETF
protocol. How could there be, even in theory, if the RFCs are to
remain open and freely redistributable? I don't think an
implementation would count as a derivative work under copyright law.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb