Hi John,
Let me attempt to clarify as I was the IETF Trustee who worked with Cheng on this, and I really want to clear up some of the assertions you've made.
When Cheng says "The IETF" , it was the IETF Trust who is and was responsible for responding to his request on what would be involved in releasing the very beautiful IETF 103 shirt for others to print and reproduce.
The Trust as part of its regular business is approached with requests to license assets which it owns and manages. This one is no different from any other license request; The Trust looks at it, determines if it actually has any assets involved in the request, and then responds.
The Trust looked at the shirt and Cheng's request to enable the shirt to be made open for reproduction by anyone, conferred with the Trust's legal counsel, and concluded there were two issues in the request: (1) Copyright of the Elephant graphic; (2) Trademark issues around the IETF and other logos.
Unfortunately the way we speak casually to one another versus when speaking in more specific legal meanings has introduced some confusion here; When Cheng says " IETF has approved that we can have the design of IETF 103 T-shirt...", it doesn’t mean the IETF formally approved the use of Elephant design. The Trust does not own the copyright to the Elephant image, so the actual thing that happened was the IETF Trust saying we have no objection and it's up to the copyright holder.
The answer that the Trust, after conferring with the Trust's legal counsel, gave on the copyrighted image to Cheng was:
"The Trust has no objection to the copyright owner of the front image
publishing that image under open license terms, such as any of the
Creative Commons licenses."
As you can see the IETF Trust made no claim to the copyright of the image, nor is it taking on the license of the copyright from anyone.
The Trust is not in the business of making T shirts, and the Trust does not hold the copyright of the images of the IETF meeting T shirts in its assets. We do own trademarks on the IETF logo, more on that below.
This discussion did prompt the IETF LLC to add to the upcoming retreat agenda (https://www7.ietf.org/about/groups/llc-board/meeting-info/ ) a discussion on the Café Press store. You'll note that this item is in the open session for observers on December 12th.
The IETF logo which is trademarked and owned by the IETF Trust is more difficult, as it’s a responsibility of the Trust as the mark owner to manage and protect it. For that you need to license it from the IETF Trust if any party wishes to produce it on anything from a web page to a T shirt or even sky writing.
A bit of background for those readers who haven't been involved in hosting an IETF meeting and producing T shirts for it. When someone hosts an IETF meeting they sign a legal contract in the form of a MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding) which among other things grants to them the use of IETF marks for their work as an IETF meeting host. This grant enables the meeting host to produce T shirts with the IETF logo on them. Production means to actually produce the shirts for the specific IETF meeting, not just design a layout.
The T shirts typically have some artwork created by the host along with the host's trademarked company logo and the trademarked IETF logo. There are a bundle of legal rights owned by different parties tied up in the T shirt design, which is why having all the past IETF meeting shirts available as print on demand would require some work to gather all the needed rights from the parties that hold them.
The issue of the trademarked IETF logo, which had been licensed to Huawei for these shirts under the terms of their MOU as a meeting host, was something the IETF Trust does hold as an owned asset and is something the Trust is responsible for managing and protecting. The Trust declined to grant a license for the use of the IETF logo into a shirt design which would be open for anyone to reproduce. That doesn't mean we aren't open to efforts to get great shirts like this one into people's hands; We said in the our response to Cheng (below) that we're open to further discussion which would involve finding a path that permitted use of the IETF mark but didn't violate the legal need to protect the mark so as to avoid losing it.
What we said to Cheng was:
"The sleeve image and the back image raise
more complex issues, however, and we would have limitations on our
ability to enable open licensing. We’re open to further discussion,
but the clearest answer we can give you right now is ‘no objection’
to whatever licensing arrangements the copyright owner decides upon in
connection with the front image, and ‘no’ to the question of further
licensing of the back images."
This is all normal business for the IETF Trust, and didn’t involve any overreach. No new license was granted, we made no claim on the image, and no assets were sold from the IETF Trust.
.
One final personal comment: It really was a nice shirt design.
Regards
Glenn Deen
On 12/10/18, 8:35 AM, "ietf on behalf of John C Klensin" <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx on behalf of john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
The following just appeared on the "103attendees" list. It
raises several questions that should, I think, be of broader
interest especially as we transition to the new IETF LLC model
and independence (of the LLC) Trustees of the IETF Trust. For
example:
(1) When "IETF" is giving (and denying) permission like this,
who is the authorizing body or individual? In what minutes or
other statement is that documented?
(2) If the IETF (presumably the IETF Trust, but I'm not sure)
owns sufficient rights to t-shirt images to grant permission,
does that mean it asked for and got explicit transfers of
copyright from designers or that it obtained a license giving it
permission to authorize use beyond t-shirts? If those things
did happen, why is that information (apparently) not public? (I
note that searches for "t-shirt" and "elephant" in the IPR
Disclosure database yields nothing, that there is no hint of
t-shirt designs on the Trust's "Trademarks, Patents, & Logos"
page, nor is there any information on the Trust's "Licenses",
"Assets", or "Contracts" pages that looks anything like t-shirt
designs.)
(3) If "the IETF" does own those rights, is there a reason for
not granting permission to reproduce the entire t-shirt design
without special authorization, much as that permission has been
granted for reproduction of RFCs? Is there a plan to either
reproduce old t-shirts and sell (or auction) them to contribute
to the IETF LLC coffers or to sell off the right to do that? If
so, where is that discussion reflected in minutes and why are
t-shirt designs not listed as assets of the IETF Trust? And,
noting that, on quick inspection, I wasn't able to find any
authorization for the revised IETF Trust to sell assets, who
would do the selling (under IASA version 1, it was fairly clear
that the closely-linked IAOC could do that, but, with the
changes in the linkages, this might actually be a loose end).
I don't know if these questions are important in and of
themselves but, as we move forward, the ways in which things
like this are managed may be important examples of how we want
the new Trustees and the LLC Board to behave (or not behave and
the time to either get specific in documents or establish clear
precedents is probably now).
best,
john
--On Friday, December 7, 2018 03:03 +0000 "Chengli (Cheng Li)"
<chengli13@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Good news, IETF has approved that we can have the design of
> IETF 103 T-shirt for free, but only for the front image! That
> "elephant".
>
> You can have the elephant at
> https://github.com/muzixing/ietf103-tshirt.
>
> However, We CAN NOT use the back image of the T-shirt.
>
> Regarding the Zen logo, if you want it, you can ask IETF for a
> LICENSE of using it for "non-trademark" purpose, and no money
> is needed.
>
> Sounds good enough! Hope you and your family will like the
> elephant, Hahahaha. Thanks for liking it!
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Best Regards,
> Cheng
