Re: draft-ietf-ipr-trademarks-00.txt

[Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld at sun.com>]

On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 18:56, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> I would feel more comfortable if all unavoidable uses of (TM) and (R)
> markers within IETF documents were accompanied with a clear IPR
> statement.

This will result in delay in the publication if the draft has to
be held until the trademark IPR claim appears in the IPR repository.

> Can I ask what the motivation for this document is?  As far as I know,
> there are no legal requirement, in any jurisdiction, to add (TM) or
> (R) when writing a trademark in general.

RFC3667 requires that trademarks be acknowledged in RFC's, but is not specific
about the exact form of reference to use.

A disagreement arose as to the meaning of 3667 in the specific case 
where the holder of the trademark is author of an I-D.  The trademark 
holder, citing 3667, wanted to insert text which in my opinion violated 
the no-IPR-claims-in-documents requirement of 3668.  I raised this 
issue through my AD and after discussion the IESG referred the question 
to this WG,  and this document is an attempt to nail down the resolution.

One relevant part of 3667 is:

> 3.4.  Representations and Warranties
> 
>   With respect to each Contribution, each Contributor represents that
>   to the best of his or her knowledge and ability:
> 	...
>
>   e. 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.

When this was pointed out several people on this list agreed that this 
wording was too strong (though the "where reasonable" allows
for some wiggle room).

The wording in draft-ietf-ipr-trademarks-00 would appear to implicitly 
weaken the requirement here as section 2 of -trademarks-00 uses wording 
such as "A contributor may indicate ...".

I'd like to see the new document explicitly amend 3.4(e) of 3667, but I'd 
also rather get this over with quickly..

						- Bill




_______________________________________________
Ipr-wg mailing list
Ipr-wg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg