referencing trademarks in RFCs

[Steve Bellovin <smb at research.att.com>]

The issue of trademarks recognition has come up in a working group.  
The IESG has asked the IPR working group to discuss the issue and 
formulate a policy.

Section 3.3(a)(D) says that contributors grant rights to the IETF to 
reproduce trademarks, etc.  It also says:

           When reproducing Contributions, the IETF 
           will preserve trademark and service mark identifiers used by
           the Contributor of the Contribution, including (TM) and (R)
           where appropriate, and

3.4(e) says that contributors warrant that

      All trademarks, trade names, service marks and other proprietary
      names used in the Contribution that are reasonably and personally
      known to the Contributor are clearly designated as such where
      reasonable.

The question is how trademarks should be designated.  Clearly, a (TM) 
or a (R) is permitted by the RFC.  Furthermore, 3.6 says that 
conditions pertaining to implementors using the trademarked terms 
should be listed on the IETF IPR page, just as is done for patents.  We 
do have a tradition of not listing specific IPR claims in RFCs, partly 
because ownership and/or validity of such claims can change over time.

On the other hand, some trademark owners want to include a more 
specific acknowledgment, i.e., "Foobar is a trademark of the Hackers 
Corporation".  It's been done before; see, for example, RFCs 1510, 
2160, 3268, 2268, and 2936.  Beyond that, simply using a trademarked 
term within an RFC is, arguably, done solely at the pleasure of the 
trademark owner; that is quite different from a patent, where a 
protocol specification does not infringe.  Furthermore, trademark 
owners have a legal duty to protect their trademarks, at risk of losing 
them.

That said, specific ownership statements are not universal.  Pulling a 
(non-random) book off my shelf, I see the statement "Many of the 
designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their 
products are claimed as trademarks.  Where those designations appear in 
this book, and Addison-Wesley was aware of a trademark claim, the 
designations have been printed in initial capital letters or in all 
capitals."  Do we want more boilerplate instead?

So -- how should trademarks be denoted?  Just a (TM) or (R)?  Specific 
ownership statements?  A blanket statement?

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb



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