Intellectual property rights

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During the standards process any IETF contribution covered by patents or patent applications owned by a participant or their sponsor must be disclosed, or they must refrain from participating. A contribution is any submission to the IETF that is intended for publication as all or part of an Internet-Draft or an RFC, or any statement made within the context of an IETF activity such as a working group discussion on a mailing list or during a meeting. BCP 79 provides a more complete description of how Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are handled in IETF standards processes. The IETF Datatracker maintains a list of IPR disclosures made to the IETF.

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