To qualify for protection, an industrial design must be aesthetic, and I believe that elegant design should be one of our goals in protocol design. However, industrial designs are "divorced from all technical aspects of the article", and thus at least some small portion of our ongoing work may be ineligible for protection. A major obstacle to be overcome before applying for design protection for our work is the fact that ASCII RFCs can not contain lines or colors, and would probably be rejected by the appropriate national offices. Finally, please note the treaties: Terribly Complex Protection for Intellectual Property (TCP/IP) Ugly Dumb Protection for Intellectual Property (UDP/IP) may directly impact our work. Y(J)S _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf