Comment Date: 15.04.2014
Subject Issue: IETF trademarks and future plans/decisions.
Comment Author: Abdussalam Baryun (AB).
Your request for comments was dated 04.04.2014
The end date of comment period 05.05.2014
Dear Trustees,
I thank you for your request, and would like to see more feedback requests in the future on this list for at least once per year. IMO the trust agreement may need some changes in future to involve more organised feedback but organised by IETF general area participants. It will be better to involve IETF WGs when requests related to IETF future image. I am not sure if there is a RFC for that openness and involvement but it will be good to have in similar request issues.
My feedbacks/comments or opinions/suggestions on the issue are:
0) IMHO the secretariatsIETF is a service mark not a trademark. But IETF is the registered trademark. Any trademark and organisation logo has its markets, so hopefully we know our markets.
1) that we IETF need to protect and use our trademarks, and not sure how we were using the secretariats trademark. If used we should have made some money from it. You did not report about past benefits from that trademark within your request. Also what kind of markets was that trademark targeting.
2) the IETF trademark should be used in favour of IETF to cover its protect expenses. Is there plans for this? I need to know also if there are future plans. I suggest you make plans available to community because our feedback needs to stand on some ground otherwise you are asking someone with no market-history knowledge. I would like to know information of the markets for all IETF marks if available, then my feedback will be better useful.
3) I don't know who is the current IETF secretariats (it may be because I think that knowledge will not benefit me). I don't think there is/were a market plan for that trademark. The IETF web page does not announce the secretariats name, which can be a form of protection. However, IETF ADs and IETF chair are well known, so I suggest announcing the name of the secretariats.
4) many companies use IETF meetings and participate/host but is there integrated projects among companies using IETF trademark, so that the IETF general area can establish. Is that situation I think the secretariats trademark can be helpful. So I hope you define (defined conditions or situations or markets) when we need or don't need that secretariats trademark, also that you have a plan when to bring it back registered if your defined conditions apply.
5) IETF trademark is not really with good standards of trademarks (if we evaluate it properly). If I compare with IEEE then I may think that whom responsible are not marketing/planning for IETF marks/logos.
Thanks for your message, wishing you all the best.
Best Regards
AB
On 4/4/14, IETF Administrative Director <iad@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> All;
>
> The Trustees of the IETF Trust have voted an intent to renounce (abandon)
> the "IETF Secretariat"
> trademark, but before taking any action they desire to hear from the
> community.