Hi, I think this is a good summary on IANA trademark that could be interest. Please pay attention to the last paragraph. Regards sent from Google nexus 4 kindly excuse brevity and typos. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@jck.com> Date: 22 Jun 2015 19:21 Subject: Re: [Ianaplan] [CWG-Stewardship] ICG request concerning IANA trademark and iana.org domain name To: "Mwendwa Kivuva" <Kivuva@transworldafrica.com> Cc: <ianaplan@ietf.org> --On Monday, June 22, 2015 16:54 -0300 Mwendwa Kivuva <Kivuva@transworldafrica.com> wrote:
... Today I asked to Greg Shetan, Chair Intellectual Property Community at ICANN on what he thought on the request to transfer the Intellectual Propert out of ICANN. His view was we should look at trademark law and take the direction that works well for all parties. His Personal view was the IANA Function Operator should hold these trademarks. I hope I have not misquoted him.
Hi. I think this illustrates the principle that the answer to questions often depends on exactly what question one asks. Let's review how we got here and please pass this note onto Mr. Shatan. Today, the IANA Function Operator is ICANN so, by the advice above, the right party has the trademarks. However, various parts of the community have gotten concerned that ICANN might use the ownership of the trademarks to prevent, or set conditions on, all or part of the IANA Function from being turned over to some separate operator. As I understand it, the NTIA, under the current contract, would not allow the trademark or domain name the IANA Function to be transferred to a separate operator without the trademarks, domain names, and, incidentally, the contents of various registries going along with it. So, unless other arrangements can be found that make sure that any transfer of the IANA function occur with the full support of the outgoing incumbent and take any IPR, including the trademark and domain name with it as part of the deal (and assuming the trademark, etc., really are important), "the name should be held by the IANA Function Operator" could turn out to be a guarantee that an incumbent IANA Function Operator could hold onto that role as long as it liked, dictating whatever conditions it liked. The following summary is crude, but, AFAICT, the position of the communities so far is: IETF: At least for us, the trademark and domain name are not nearly as important as some parties believe. Beyond that, ICANN has been well-behaved in this particular area, we really don't believe that is likely to change (implying that, should there need to be a change in the IANA Functions Operator, ICANN would cooperate in transferring the names rather than trying to dig in and hold onto them as a negotiating point even though that would cause significant inconvenience and perhaps damage to Internet security and stability), and putting a lot of energy into this issue isn't worth it. The IETF does, however, have a handy structure that holds various intellectual property assets in trust for the broad Internet community. That structure has a very good track record and, if the other communities involved see a need to transfer the trademarks and domain names out of ICANN (presumably because of lack of trust in ICANN future good behavior), we would be willing to hold those assets too. RIRs: apparently see somewhat more risk than the IETF does (perhaps because the IETF believes it is in a better position to just walk away if things got really bad) and would prefer to see the trademark and domain names transferred to the IETF Trust to administer on behalf of the broader community. CWG: Sees creating PTI, transferring the domain name and trademarks to it, for exclusive use, and setting up a detailed set of licensing arrangements that best solution to the problem. If that mischaracterizes the position, please explain. Otherwise (personal option only, but one informed by working with IANA and on IANA policies long before anyone dreamed of ICANN and having been somewhat involved with the IANA transition to ICANN and the first few rounds of this discussion): PTI is an interesting idea. It it were the IANA Function Operator, the above answer to your question suggests that it should hold the trademarks, etc. However, as long as it is ICANN-controlled, its holding the trademarks does not, by itself, provide any protection against the trademarks being used as leverage to prevent moving the function away from ICANN (and its subsidiaries and affiliates) entirely. So, ignoring any other issues associated with PTI, if the concern is that the trademarks not be used to restrict either the reasonable behavior of the IANA "customers" or the ability to remove the IANA function entirely from ICANN's scope and assign it, intact and without a great deal of strife, to some other entity, the PTI model just doesn't help. Two additional comments: One of the things I understood Larry Strickling to say yesterday afternoon is that the focus of the transition effort should be on transition requirements and that it would probably be good if various parts of the community avoiding using "transition" as an excuse to engage in overall ICANN reform and reorganization. I can see several motivations for PTI if we were trying, again, to reform and reorganize ICANN, but, if that it not the goal, then the odds of success in getting a transition plan completed and approved seem to me to be much higher if we keep this simple rather than trying to create new organization elements and then trying to sort of the relationships between them and everyone/ everything else. Again, just my opinion, but.... Also, with no disrespect to anyone involved, if you came to people who were spending a very large fraction of their lives on IETF protocol work and asked "is Internet protocol work important?", it is unlikely that you would get many negative answers. Asking someone involved as staff or a Board or Advisory Committee member whether a well-managed and fairly allocated Internet address space is important would also be unlikely to get a negative answer. Similarly, if I asked an actively practicing Intellectual Property lawyer if trademarks are important, I would certainly expect a "yes" answer and be surprised if I got anything else. That doesn't make any of those "yes, it is important" answers wrong -- they are probably correct -- it just makes the answers sufficiently close to obvious to make the questions barely worth asking. best, john _______________________________________________ Ianaplan mailing list Ianaplan@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ianaplan