Dear colleagues, On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 01:37:37PM -0400, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
Some of us think that the disposition of the mark and domain name doesn't matter, because there are in effect only two possibilities for separation.
[…] I've received some mail off-list about my remarks, and I want to make some things perfectly clear: 1. I'm speaking, as always when I send from this address, as an individual and not as IAB chair. The IAB chair has no special power in the IETF, and in my experience as often as not the fact of being on the IAB is a reason others will believe something _other_ than what the IAB member says. I'm just one of the IETF participants, and I do not represent it or speak for its consensus. The IETF consensus is contained in the Internet Draft that emerged from the IANAPLAN working group. If I speak as IAB chair, I send the message from the iab-chair@iab.org address and sign the mail appropriately. 2. Given what CRISP has proposed, it's quite plain that there's a conflict between the current ICANN/CWG proposal and the CRISP proposal. It's a matter of considerable concern that other communities, who currently rely on their use of the term IANA, would have their use of that name (and frankly, rather more importantly, their use of the iana.org registries) constrained by ICANN or PTI, and I'd be quite surprised if they'd be ok with just accepting that. To my everlasting regret (this is not in jest) I am not a lawyer, so I'm not competent to speak on how trademarks in particular ought to be or can be held. It strikes me that we probably would be wise to consider the domain name iana.org and the trademark on IANA separately, given that there are different technical (i.e. both technology-technical and legal-technical) implications with them. It strikes me that, if it really isn't legally possible to move the ownership of the trademark, one possibility would be for ICANN to grant a permanent, worldwide, irrevocable (well, for as long as they hold the trademark, with appropriate succession language or however one does this) royalty-free license to the trademark to current communities that use the IANA. This would avoid problems of being unable to use the trademark. Presumably in the case of the NRO it would have to be sublicensable or something like that, so that new number organizations would not face a problem if they came into existence. I think this license would have to survive separation, which seems like it might be slightly tricky but presumably not impossible. I think the position that Greg advanced (along with others) considerably increases the risk of IANA separation as a necessary condition for the transition, which seems bad since it would tend to be destabilising. I'm sure none of us wants that. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com