this was considered before, but my reading of the Process document didn't agree with the notion that the grace period applies to substantive contributions (which a further comment in the issue you mentioned seems to confirm).

With that said, for the case of w3c/webdriver-bidi#729, since the substantive part of the contribution was made prior to the group's renewal, I think it should be fine to ignore the IPR bot error and merge the PR (possibly documenting the reasoning on the issue)

Are you saying we need to get the Process changed in order to get the IPR bot changed? If so, I'll go back to the Process group

The IPR bot aims to follow what the Process and the Patent Policy entail; it could be that my reading is wrong (if so the IPR bot should be fixed); but if it's not, then indeed this would need the Process / Patent Policy to be changed.