Patent Disclosure Process

This page describes a proposed process for domain committees and their secretaries to follow to ensure adherence to IHE's patent disclosure policy.

1) IHE's Principles of Governance include an intellectual property policy that defines a duty to disclose know patents, which are "Necessary Claims." That means that in developing systems compliant with some IHE Technical Framework document, an implementer will necessarily infringe upon a patent claim.

2) Every domain committee member serves as a representative of an IHE Member Organization. In applying for membership, these organizations have all agreed to abide by the Principles of Governance, including specifically the IP policy and the patent disclosure obligation. It is the duty of the domain secretary to maintain committee rosters for that domain and to ensure that all committee members are in fact designated representatives of IHE Member Organizations. The list of organizations is published at http://www.ihe.net/governance/member_organizations.cfm. Membership applications and the Principles of Governance document are linked at http://www.ihe.net/governance/index.cfm.

3)

The duty to disclose applies both to profiles under development and to those already published.