[CCG]Re: IETF Trust Restructuring & Transfer of IANA Intellectual Property

[John Curran <[e-mail]>]

I’m not certain who’s listed as the Chair for the Numbers Community portion of the CCG, but I have raised this consent request with the NRO EC and believe it will be discussed at our meeting next week.

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers


On Jul 16, 2024, at 12:24 PM, Russ Housley <[e-mail]> wrote:

Hi.

Does an CCG member have concerns with the transfer that Glenn has posted about?

I have been following this for many months, and the most significant change is the ability for the directors to get insurance coverage.  The rest of the changes are details to make that work out.

Russ


On Jul 15, 2024, at 2:25 PM, Glenn Deen <[e-mail]> wrote:


Hello CCG Chairs,

As Chair of the IETF Trust I'm writing to you on behalf of the IETF Trust about the transfer of IANA Intellectual Property held and managed by the IETF Trust to the new not-for-profit Delaware based IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation  (IPMC) that the current IETF Trust a Virginia based Common Trust entity is restructuring into.

This IETF Trust restructuring has been underway for some time now and is nearing its end.  We are now undertaking the final steps, which largely involve the actual transfer of the Intellectual Property and IP rights held by the IETF Trust.

For anyone not familiar with this restructuring work, the IETF Trust's role remains the same, as does the appointment processes for the 5 IETF Trustees (3 from IETF noncom, 1 from IETF IESG and 1 from ISOC Board of Trustees).  The IETF Trustees will now be Directors of the new corporation.

What has changed is all legal under the covers, with the IETF Trust legally changing from a Virginia Common Trust to a Delaware not-for-profit corporation which like the Virginia entity has been recognized by the IRS as a not-profit 501c3.      If you're interested in the details , the new Legal Documents<https://trustee.ietf.org/documents/founding-documents/> [1] and the Community Consultation<https://trustee.ietf.org/about/community-consultation-on-restructuring-the-ietf-trust/> [2] are all available on the IETF Trust<https://trustee.ietf.org/> website (https://trustee.ietf.org<https://trustee.ietf.org/>)

The IETF Trust provides service beyond the IETF community by holding IANA related Intellectual Property assigned to it as part of the 2016 IANA restructuring.    See Exhibits A & B in the IANA Assignment Agreement<https://trustee.ietf.org/wp-content/uploads/Assignment-Agreement-2016-09-30-Executed.pdf> [3]  for the full asset list of IANA IP  consisting of Trademarks and Domain Names.      Under the agreement, the IETF Trust holds the IANA TMs, maintaining registrations and taking appropriate actions as needed to protect the TMs.    The IETF Trustees also provide change approval for the transferred DNS Domains whereby approval by any 3 of the 5 Trustees is required for any technical changes to the domains.

During a review of reassignment of agreements the IETF Trust with different parties, we recently came across a requirement in the 2016 IANA agreements [3][4] around the IANA Intellectual Property held by the IETF Trust that requires that we consult and get approval from the CCG for the Transfer of the IANA IP assets.

BTW, Here is the requirement:   Section 4.2 of the Community Agreement<https://trustee.ietf.org/wp-content/uploads/Community-Agreement-2016-09-30-Executed.pdf> [4]

4.2 Encumbrances and Transfer. Except as contemplated by this Agreement and the License Agreements, the IETF Trust shall not sell, lease (as lessor), transfer or otherwise dispose of, or mortgage or pledge, or impose or suffer to be imposed any Encumbrance on, in whole or in part, any of the IANA Intellectual Property without the prior written approval of the CCG, which shall not be unreasonably withheld.

While the transfer isn't to outside of the IETF Trust, we've tried to err on the side of compliance so we're writing to the CCG chairs.

To be fully transparent, if you check in the US TM database, you'll see that the IANA TMs were transferred as part of a batch of transfers done for the IETF TMs held by the Trust.   Our sincere apologies for getting ahead of obtaining CCG approval, we had previously reviewed the IANA agreements related to re-assignment, but only on a recent re-review came across the specific need in Section 4.2 related to the CCG approval.     Now that we see the requirement, we are working to correct and comply.

Current status of IANA IP: The IANA TMs transfers have been submitted to various TM regimes that they are registered in and some like the US have been processed.     The DNS Domains have not yet been transferred and the Trustees of the Virginia Trust are continuing their role as technical change approvers.

To comply with our IANA agreement under section 4.2, the IETF Trust intends to send to the 3 CCG Chairs a formal transfer approval request for the IANA IP via Docusign.

Since we've never done this sort of request with the CCG we don't have any past process for IETF Trust::CCG interaction to follow, hence this note.

In terms of time, we'd like to resolve this as quickly as possible.  We're very near the end of the restructuring and we'd like to complete our asset transfers.

Are there any questions that you have, or should we go ahead and send the notice over for signatures?

Referenced Links:

[1] https://trustee.ietf.org/documents/founding-documents/
[2] https://trustee.ietf.org/about/community-consultation-on-restructuring-the-ietf-trust/
[3] https://trustee.ietf.org/wp-content/uploads/Assignment-Agreement-2016-09-30-Executed.pdf
[4] https://trustee.ietf.org/wp-content/uploads/Community-Agreement-2016-09-30-Executed.pdf


Regards
Glenn Deen,
IETF Trust Chair

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