ACESCentral Virtual Working Group Participation Guidelines
Summary
ACESCentral Virtual Working Groups are intended to enable and encourage the broadest possible participation by the community. As with any healthy and productive community, setting expectations for good citizenship from the start is important, e.g., be nice, consider the Virtual Working Group as a public forum, don’t publicly disparage anyone or speak on behalf of the Virtual Working Group (unless you are the Group Lead), etc.
Please see below for the full Virtual Working Group Participation Guidelines.
Details
The work product of ACESCentral Virtual Working Groups (VWGs) is intended for the benefit of the industry, and where appropriate, will be introduced to a Standards Development Organization (SDO) such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).
The guidelines under which the VWGs operate are designed to encourage a productive and collaborative working environment similar to SDOs with some important differences. In particular, intellectual property issues, including declarations and licensing, will be addressed in the appropriate SDO. That means intellectual property ownership will not be considered as part of the VWGs’ technical problem-solving process, and the VWG will remain neutral with respect to any participant’s intellectual property position or that of a VWG participant’s employer. VWG participants should be aware that SDOs generally require that any patented technology required for the practice of a standard be offered for license either royalty-free or under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms or the technology is unlikely to be included in that standard.
Although VWG participants are required to be registered ACESCentral users, all VWG discussions should be considered public disclosure, and VWG participants acknowledge that any information provided in the course of the VWG’s work is freely shared within the VWG.
While the operator of ACESCentral will protect its own trademarks, it will not attempt to patent any VWG work product. VWG participants agree that as a condition of both their invitation to join and their ongoing participation, they will not attempt to patent the work of the VWG or knowingly assist in the development of patents or other intellectual property rights that hinder the implementation of VWG-developed solutions and technologies.
The operator of ACESCentral recognizes that conflicts with these guidelines may arise when VWG participants work for companies developing intellectual property. For example, a VWG participant’s company may be actively pursuing patents in potentially relevant areas. If such intellectual property would potentially hinder the implementation of the VWG-developed solutions and technologies, and the VWG member is aware of such intellectually property work, then this would be a clear conflict. Under such circumstances, the VWG participants must - just as in an SDO - either persuade their company not to pursue such conflicting IP, decline the invitation to participate, or, if already involved with VWG activities when made aware of the conflict, resign from the VWG. VWG members are expected to make their best good faith effort to inform the ACESCentral admin of any potentially relevant intellectual property issues that might, under these guidelines, impact their participation in a VWG.
VWG participants are requested to refer all press inquiries regarding VWG activities to the ACESCentral admin, and to refrain from attributing VWG comments to ACESCentral members in other public forums.
10/16/17
ACESCentral_VWGGuidelines_10-16-17.pdf (26.8 KB)