Re: [Ianaplan] [CWG-Stewardship] ICG request concerning IANA trademark and iana.org domain name

[Seun Ojedeji <[e-mail]>]

I  wholeheartedly thank you for this summary of the entire situation.

I specifically like the last paragraph. I think the other 2 communities
needs this summary as well

Regards

sent from Google nexus 4
kindly excuse brevity and typos.
On 22 Jun 2015 19:21, "John C Klensin" <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
>
> --On Monday, June 22, 2015 16:54 -0300 Mwendwa Kivuva
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> >...
> > Today I asked to Greg Shetan, Chair Intellectual Property
> > Community at ICANN on what he thought on the request to
> > transfer the Intellectual Propert out of ICANN. His view was
> > we should look at trademark law and take the direction that
> > works well for all parties. His Personal view was the IANA
> > Function Operator should hold these trademarks. I hope I have
> > not misquoted him.
>
> Hi.  I think this illustrates the principle that the answer to
> questions often depends on exactly what question one asks.
> Let's review how we got here and please pass this note onto Mr.
> Shatan.
>
> Today, the IANA Function Operator is ICANN so, by the advice
> above, the right party has the trademarks.  However, various
> parts of the community have gotten concerned that ICANN might
> use the ownership of the trademarks to prevent, or set
> conditions on, all or part of the IANA Function from being
> turned over to some separate operator.  As I understand it, the
> NTIA, under the current contract, would not allow the trademark
> or domain name the IANA Function to be transferred to a separate
> operator without the trademarks, domain names, and,
> incidentally, the contents of various registries going along
> with it.
>
> So, unless other arrangements can be found that make sure that
> any transfer of the IANA function occur with the full support of
> the outgoing incumbent and take any IPR, including the trademark
> and domain name with it as part of the deal (and assuming the
> trademark, etc., really are important), "the name should be held
> by the IANA Function Operator" could turn out to be a guarantee
> that an incumbent IANA Function Operator could hold onto that
> role as long as it liked, dictating whatever conditions it liked.
>
> The following summary is crude, but, AFAICT, the position of the
> communities so far is:
>
> IETF: At least for us, the trademark and domain name are not
> nearly as important as some parties believe.  Beyond that, ICANN
> has been well-behaved in this particular area, we really don't
> believe that is likely to change (implying that, should there
> need to be a change in the IANA Functions Operator, ICANN would
> cooperate in transferring the names rather than trying to dig in
> and hold onto them as a negotiating point even though that would
> cause significant inconvenience and perhaps damage to Internet
> security and stability), and putting a lot of energy into this
> issue isn't worth it.
>
> The IETF does, however, have a handy structure that holds
> various intellectual property assets in trust for the broad
> Internet community.  That structure has a very good track record
> and, if the other communities involved see a need to transfer
> the trademarks and domain names out of ICANN (presumably because
> of lack of trust in ICANN future good behavior), we would be
> willing to hold those assets too.
>
>
> RIRs: apparently see somewhat more risk than the IETF does
> (perhaps because the IETF believes it is in a better position to
> just walk away if things got really bad) and would prefer to see
> the trademark and domain names transferred to the IETF Trust to
> administer on behalf of the broader community.
>
> CWG: Sees creating PTI, transferring the domain name and
> trademarks to it, for exclusive use, and setting up a detailed
> set of licensing arrangements that best solution to the problem.
> If that mischaracterizes the position, please explain.
>
> Otherwise (personal option only, but one informed by working
> with IANA and on IANA policies long before anyone dreamed of
> ICANN and having been somewhat involved with the IANA transition
> to ICANN and the first few rounds of this discussion):
>
> PTI is an interesting idea.   It it were the IANA Function
> Operator, the above answer to your question suggests that it
> should hold the trademarks, etc.  However, as long as it is
> ICANN-controlled, its holding the trademarks does not, by
> itself, provide any protection against the trademarks being used
> as leverage to prevent moving the function away from ICANN (and
> its subsidiaries and affiliates) entirely.  So, ignoring any
> other issues associated with PTI, if the concern is that the
> trademarks not be used to restrict either the reasonable
> behavior of the IANA "customers" or the ability to remove the
> IANA function entirely from ICANN's scope and assign it, intact
> and without a great deal of strife, to some other entity, the
> PTI model just doesn't help.
>
> Two additional comments:
>
> One of the things I understood Larry Strickling to say yesterday
> afternoon is that the focus of the transition effort should be
> on transition requirements and that it would probably be good if
> various parts of the community avoiding using "transition" as an
> excuse to engage in overall ICANN reform and reorganization.  I
> can see several motivations for PTI if we were trying, again, to
> reform and reorganize ICANN, but, if that it not the goal, then
> the odds of success in getting a transition plan completed and
> approved seem to me to be much higher if we keep this simple
> rather than trying to create new organization elements and then
> trying to sort of the relationships between them and everyone/
> everything else.  Again, just my opinion, but....
>
> Also, with no disrespect to anyone involved, if you came to
> people who were spending a very large fraction of their lives on
> IETF protocol work and asked "is Internet protocol work
> important?", it is unlikely that you would get many negative
> answers.   Asking someone involved as staff or a Board or
> Advisory Committee member whether a well-managed and fairly
> allocated Internet address space is important would also be
> unlikely to get a negative answer.  Similarly, if I asked an
> actively practicing Intellectual Property lawyer if trademarks
> are important, I would certainly expect a "yes" answer and be
> surprised if I got anything else.  That doesn't make any of
> those "yes, it is important" answers wrong -- they are probably
> correct -- it just makes the answers sufficiently close to
> obvious to make the questions barely worth asking.
>
> best,
>     john
>
>
>
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