‘Not a research engineer’
In the email, sent Nov. 10, Woodard said a superior had told him to leave working group 802.11, which decides on standards used by Wi-Fi technology to connect to the internet. The email was published on the IEEE’s website as customary for exchanges between members, but was later removed.
“My new director … is putting a stop to my participation in 802.11,” Woodard wrote to Au. “She believes the risk is too great for exposure that Huawei is putting patent counsel … into 802 and trying to give him voting rights and direct ability to make comments on draft text,” he wrote, adding: “I’m neither a lawyer nor a registered agent, just in the job function of one.”
“The optics” of Woodard’s being involved in the work “is that I have no way of contributing technically since I am not a research engineer,” he wrote. “My only possible agenda is to get draft text to align with our [intellectual property rights] by ‘stuffing their ballot box.’”
The standards organization’s working groups make decisions based on the votes of individual members, according to its rules. Members get voting rights by taking part in a certain number of plenary sessions where the voting takes place.
The Huawei employee was yet to gain full voter status and was labeled as an “aspirant” in an earlier version of an online list, which was updated to delete his name on Nov. 25, shortly after POLITICO asked the IEEE for comment. In his email he referred to a plenary session in Madrid that he took part in earlier this year.
A LinkedIn profile listed as Andrew W. suggests Woodard has been a “patent portfolio manager for Wi-Fi and Photonics” at Huawei in Canada since 2019. The profile links to the IEEE’s 802.11 group and says the person has an “emphasis on monetization of standard essential patents,” or SEPs — the patents that all companies need to have to be able to connect to the internet.
