Glenn,
Thanks for the explanation. It does, however, suggest some
other things (partially as input to the upcoming retreat and
partially for the Nomcom and IESG as the appoint Trustees -- I
hope they are listening):
(1) Your explanation suggests that the Trustees need to be
considerably more expert on these issues than the typical IETF
participant. I don't have any problems with that, but it
should affect who volunteers and how Trustees are selected from
the volunteer pool.
(2) To the extent to which, under IASA 2.0, the IETF Trust is
really expected to operate independently of the IETF LLC, even
if it is generally assumed that some coordination will be
needed), popping this into the LLC retreat agenda raises several
questions. In particular, why is this a matter for the LLC
Board at this point rather than something for which the LLC
should await a recommendation from the Trustees? The agenda
item seems to be only about the "IETF Café press store", an
entity that I did not know existed and for which a quick search
did not find any evidence of an existing contract (it may be
there; I just couldn't find it). In any event, if the
discussion is just about the store, it wouldn't seem to involve
the Trust-related questions about what designs the store can
sell, which means it may not be germane to most of this
conversation. Then, given your explanation of the reasons for
this retreat before a relatively more final Board (and Trustees)
are seated, is this topic sufficiently urgent that it must be
taken up immediately? The answer may well be "yes" (e.g., if
there were a contract and it was about to expire), but I don't
think we have heard that explanation.
(3) The difference in expected expertise between Trustees and
ordinary IETF participants together with what you explain as the
difference between the vocabulary used in speaking casually to
one another versus when speaking in more specific legal meanings
suggests that the Trustees have considerable responsibility to
speak clearly to IETF participants and to educate the rest of us
about the issues. I suggest that the IAD/IAOC/Trust under the
original IASA structure did a fairly poor job of that. If we,
including the incoming Trustees, can learn from this event and
do much better along those educational and comprehensible
transparency dimensions, it will be a significant step forward.
best,
john
p.s. While IANAL and you / the Trustees should certainly discuss
this with appropriate Counsel, my understanding is that you
could authorize exact reproduction (or exact reproduction with
the addition of a copyright or other IPR notice) of a complete
t-shirt that happened to include an IETF logo without creating
trademark issues with that logo. That would presumably raise no
issues about rights to use copyrighted images that the original/
first batch didn't have unless there were specific licenses
associated with that use. My mentioning the possible analogy to
exact reproduction of RFCs was not an accident (and I hope the
Trust is looking carefully at the RFC situation as the format
evolves from a single presentation for which "exact
reproduction" is clear into a more variable situation).
--On Monday, December 10, 2018 21:42 +0000 "Deen, Glenn
(NBCUniversal)" <Glenn.Deen@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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 A്ഀ㸀 ഀഀ
