Open Letter to the IEEE About the Huawei Email

Today I sent a letter to the IEEE about the email sent by Andrew Woodward, a patent portfolio manager at Huawei Canada, to the 802.11 reflector on or around November 10, 2025 (“Huawei email”) which I have previously posted about (see The Huawei IEEE Scandal: Is Huawei a Buccaneer or a Privateer? and IEEE Sanctions - the Huawei Vote Stuffing Scandal Part 2). I sent the letter to the Senior Counsel for the IEEE Standards Association who emailed the 802 LMSC reflector (which is an email forwarding service) about the Huawei email. Here is the body of my letter.

I am writing this letter to you because you authored the publicly available email to the 802 LMSC Reflector about the email sent by Andrew Woodward, a patent portfolio manager at Huawei Canada, to the 802.11 reflector on or around November 10, 2025 (Mr. Woodward’s email, the “Huawei email”).

To introduce myself, over the past two decades, I have worked closely with numerous engineers and technical subject matter experts who have participated in the development of various IEEE standards, including 802.11.  I have also researched the early development of what became the 802.11 standard, and have read many meeting minutes, submissions and email/reflector messages going back as far as 1989.  All of these documents are matters of public record, many maintained in a publicly accessible location by the IEEE itself.  I currently write a blog about standards and standard essential patents called SEPessentials.com. 

The IEEE long has supported its core values of fair competition and non-discrimination, and its goal of developing standards “for the benefit of humanity,” through its principals of openness and transparency.  Section 1.1 (Purpose) of the IEEE Guide to Information Classification and Disclosure (which also is publicly available here: guide-to-information-classification-and-disclosure.pdf) makes this abundantly clear: 

As an educational, scientific and charitable organization dedicated to the benefit of the public, IEEE recognizes and endorses the fundamental importance of transparency and accountability in all its activities. Accordingly, it is IEEE’s policy to be open about its activities and to welcome and seek out opportunities to explain its work to the widest possible audience.

It is my understanding that, to support this openness and transparency, messages sent through the 802.11 IEEE working group reflector are not confidential.  Per the 802.11 Operations Manual (which is publicly available here: IEEE Standards Association - Documents), the 802.11 “WG also maintains a read-only reflector, to which all emails to the main WG list are copied.  Anyone can join this list” (emphasis added).  Emails from the reflector are also publicly available here:  Email Archive.

I was thus perplexed to learn that the IEEE removed the Huawei email from the publicly available 802.11 WG reflector email archive.  That removal does not seem to be in compliance with the IEEE’s policies on openness and transparency. I am writing to you to determine whether the IEEE is taking the position that this email is somehow confidential.  I will note that much of the text of the message already has been published (see for example, Huawei staffer obscured credentials to access global Wi-Fi body – POLITICO). 

As you yourself stated in your email to the 802.11 reflector: the Huawei “email raises serious potential questions about the actions of Mr. Woodard, and possibly others, that may violate the rules of IEEE and its standards development process” (email to the 802.11 WG reflector on November 13, 2025 from you, the IEEE’s “Senior Counsel, Standards Association”).  I will note that your email about the Huawei email is itself publicly available: [802-LMSC] Fwd: Communication Regarding A Recent Email to the 802.11 Ref.  And yet, the IEEE has removed the original Huawei email from public access, even though the Huawei email is a matter of public interest and public importance.   

I am writing to you to ask the following questions.  Will the IEEE preserve the public’s right to know and to determine whether the IEEE is upholding its fundamental goal of “accountability in all its activities” by restoring the Huawei email to the reflector archive?  Will the IEEE support its core tenets of openness and transparency concerning the Huawei email?  Or conversely, does the IEEE take the position that the Huawei email is somehow confidential even though it went to the entire reflector and apparently also to at least one journalist?

In the event that the IEEE is taking the position that the Huawei email is somehow confidential, please explain the basis for that belief.  In the event that you are not the right person at the IEEE to make this determination, please forward my letter on to that person and have them contact me about it.  I note that I plan to publish both this letter and the IEEE’s response on my blog. 

This situation represents a major test for the IEEE SA processes - we are all waiting to see if they are willing to do the right thing here.