TSG wrote:
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.
Sorry - I forgot to mention why this was important - "they" (as in
anyone who needs one) could theoretically publish an Internet-Draft,
properly vet it on a private list and then build and run the
interoperability testing for that protocol and declare it an
IETF-Standard, and legally speaking I am betting the Court's would find
it to be exactly that. This would support the creation of
Internet-Drafts and RFC's which never was seen by the IETF or its
membership because of this licensing terminology & they could do this by
creating a protocol between two players and vetting it privately between
them. It is also arguable that the IETF could be forced to take formal
notice of that RFC's number and respect it's issuance since it itself
created this potential through the licensing models put in place by the
Unholy Twins (BCP78 and BCP79) and their successors
Someone planning to issue their own IETF-Standard would merely set up an
internal mailing alias to meet the WG Mailing List requirement and then
vet the private protocol internally on that list. They can also change
the licensing rights on this as well based on the ability to use the
work and create derivatives of it, the licensing boilerplate on
documents and the copyrights and even NoteWell can be turned off for
these private groups.
The net of this is that the IETF has given itself away - and anyone can
now run their own little IETF as a private operation. Hey even the old
IESG trademark was formally abandoned and even though it was owned by a
real-estate consortia the abandonment means that anyone can call
themselves the IESG and issue a formal standard.
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4001:e8rlnd.2.1
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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