Re: [tlp-interest] Consultation on Restructuring the IETF Trust

[John Levine <[e-mail]>]

It appears that Brian E Carpenter  <[e-mail]> said:
>Hi,
>
>1) For those of us who will be sound asleep at the time of the webinar, may we have a pointer to the meeting materials and/or a subsequent video recording?
>
>2) That side, and writing as one of the founding Trustees, I think the proposal is very reasonable. Will there be any significant budgetary impact 
>beyond the one-time cost of creating the new LLC?

I expect that after the one-time transition cost, we will save money.

One of our largest costs is liability insurance. Our insurance agent
has told me several times that it is much easier to insure a
non-profit corporation than a trust because a lot more insurance
companies are interested in the business.  You pay less for similar
coverage, and you can get higher limits.

Also, due to a quirk of trademark law, trusts can't own trademarks so
the trademarks are registered in the names of the trustees. Every time
the list of trustees change we have to pay our lawyers to update the
trademark registrations. Once we are a non-profit corp, we change the
registrations one last time to the name of the corp and never have to
do it again.

In terms of general paperwork, it's about the same.  Either way we file
an annual Form 990 report with the US tax authorities and that's it.

R's,
John