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RFC 6579
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Yevstifeyev
Request for Comments: 6579 March 2012
Category: Informational
ISSN: 2070-1721
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 (c) 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.
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RFC 6579 'disclosure' Link Relation Type March 2012
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].
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RFC 6579 'disclosure' Link Relation Type March 2012
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.
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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:
o Relation name: disclosure
o Description: Refers to a list of patent disclosures made with
respect to material for which 'disclosure' relation is specified.
o Reference: RFC 6579
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.
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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
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