. But I thought we were talking principles, and the principle I was espousing was that all intellectual property rights in the content of the protocol parameters registries remains with the IETF, and does not vest with the registry operator. I guess I'm treading on the toes of an historic US position that in the past appeared to be that the intellectual property rights of the IANA protocol parameter registries that were operated under the terms of contracts with variously ARPA, DARPA and the NSF vested with the USG in some fashion, and its a question that we appear to want to avoid as there has never been any statements from the NTIA that expressly disclaim this, and noone appears to want to press the point.
There's this legal concept of a "quitclaim" that might be useful here. It can be used by anyone, especially in cases where there may be an appearance of (legal) interest, but where the actual facts aren't firmly established.
Webster has it as:
quit·claim
transitive verb \ kwit- kl m\
: to release or relinquish a legal claim to; especially : to release a claim to or convey by a quitclaim deed
quitclaim noun
Maybe the right answer is to simply ask for quitclaims from the US Gov't, and from ICANN, (and others?) with respect to any and all IPR, copyright claims, etc they may hold, if any, in the protocol parameters registry to be resolved or transferred to or for the benefit of the IETF trust. At least then we'd know rather than continuing to dance around it. The quid pro quo might be a quitclaim from us for similar interests in the DNS and IP registries.
Mike