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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Request for Comments: 6579
Category: Informational
ISSN: 2070-1721
M. Yevstifeyev
March 2012

The 'disclosure' Link Relation Type

Abstract

This document specifies the 'disclosure' link relation type. It designates a list of IPR disclosures made with respect to the material for which such a relation type is specified.

Status of This Memo

This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6579.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
     1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   2. 'disclosure' Link Relation Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
     2.1. Examples  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   5. Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   Appendix A. Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5

1. Introduction

RFC 5988 [RFC5988] defined a way of indicating relationships between resources on the Web. This document specifies the 'disclosure' link relation type. It designates a list of IPR disclosures made with respect to the material for which such a relation type is specified. Please note that the term "patent disclosure" should be considered synonymous with "IPR disclosure" for the purposes of 'disclosure' link relation type semantics, as patent disclosures are a subset of IPR disclosures.

The W3C already mandates the use of the 'disclosure' link relation type for links to patent disclosures in all its documents. However, it has long been used with no proper specification and registration. This document is to fill this gap and encourage wider use of the 'disclosure' relation type. It formally specifies the existing practice of use of the link relation type and registers it in the registry created by RFC 5988.

Please note that the 'disclosure' relation type designates a different resource than the 'copyright' type does; the latter refers to the copyright statement while the former is used to reference a list of patent disclosures. Please see RFC 5988 [RFC5988] for more information on the 'copyright' relation type.

1.1. Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

2. 'disclosure' Link Relation Type

Whenever the 'disclosure' relation type is used, the resource at the target Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) [RFC5988] MUST represent a list of patent disclosures made with respect to the material referenced by context IRI. This also covers the case of an empty list and a list containing one entry.

2.1. Examples

This section provides an example of possible use of the 'disclosure' relation type. 

   If the page <http://example.org/ipr/meta-spec/> contains a list of
   patent disclosures made with respect to the specification found at
   <http://example.org/specs/meta-spec/spec.html>, the latter would have
   the following fragment of HTML source code:
   
   <html>
     ...
     Please visit
     <a rel="disclosure" href="http://example.org/ipr/meta-spec/">
     the IPR page</a> for the list of patent disclosures made with
     respect to this specification.
     ...
   </html>

In the case of Link header field, the HTTP response would contain the following header field: 

      Link: <http://example.org/ipr/meta-spec/>; rel="disclosure";
            title="Patent Disclosures List"

(Please note that the actual header field will not contain the line break and spaces after the 'rel' parameter.)

3. Security Considerations

The 'disclosure' relation type is truly believed not to raise any new security issues that are not discussed in RFC 5988 for generic use of the Web linking mechanism.

4. IANA Considerations

IANA has registered the 'disclosure' link relation type in the "Link Relations" registry, with a reference to this document, using the following template:

  • Relation name: disclosure
  • Description: Refers to a list of patent disclosures made with respect to material for which 'disclosure' relation is specified.

5. Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
   
   [RFC5988]  Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 5988, October 2010.

Appendix A. Acknowledgments

Thanks to Bjoern Hoehrmann for noticing that the 'disclosure' relation is not properly specified and, correspondingly, initiating this work. The author would also like to acknowledge the contributions of (in alphabetical order) Bjoern Hoehrmann, John Klensin, Subramanian Moonesamy, Julian Reschke, Thomas Roessler, Peter Saint-Andre, Martin Thomson, and Juergen Quittek to this document.

Author's Address

Mykyta Yevstifeyev
8 Kuzovkov St., Apt. 25
Kotovsk
Ukraine

EMail: 

          evnikita2@gmail.com