Since this appears as a part of the legal boilerplate on a I-D I have
three questions to ask..
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.
So then by US Law they are copyright under the US Copyright act since
they are published by an agent in located in the US. The also are constrained
by a set of steps and processes for those working groups as well
including th the IETF's document templates.
Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
OK - let me ask the questions about this ambiguous block of text:
1) Is the Term of Art "Internet-Draft" a trademark of the IETF? - let
me answer that question - NO...
Internet_draft:__http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4009%3Ai60kv1.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl~%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=Internet_Draft&p_tagrepl~%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query
Internet-Draft yields one filer - and it was done last year in 2008-
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4009:i60kv1.3.1
2) OK - so we were told that the TRUST had taken care of this I
thought. But it clearly has not been - so then let me also ask why was
this not handled years ago by the Secretariat's office.
3) If others are allowed to publish Internet-Drafts (as a Term of Art)
does this mean they are republishing the IETF's IP's or that they are
running a system competitively to the IETF's operations?
The reason I bring this up is that this one paragraph can be interpreted
to mean that
"All of the IETF's Proprietary processes" are up for grabs just like its
network IP.
This is true since the creation of an Internet-Draft (the object
codified in the term of
art "Internet-Draft" by those process documents defining the IETF's
process) is created
though a specific set of defined steps and the ability for others to
publish Internet-Drafts
means that they also can use those process steps.
If #3 was the intent then it needs to be disclosed to the sponsor's
formally - since the IP rights being effected or controlled through the
'contribution' are theirs.
Todd Glassey
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