Subject: T-shirts and possible TF overreach??

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2018 11:34:46 -0500

The following just appeared on the "103attendees" list.   It
raises several questions that should, I think, be of broader
interest especially as we transition to the new IETF LLC model
and independence (of the LLC) Trustees of the IETF Trust.  For
example:

(1) When "IETF" is giving (and denying) permission like this,
who is the authorizing body or individual?  In what minutes or
other statement is that documented?

(2) If the IETF (presumably the IETF Trust, but I'm not sure)
owns sufficient rights to t-shirt images to grant permission,
does that mean it asked for and got explicit transfers of
copyright from designers or that it obtained a license giving it
permission to authorize use beyond t-shirts?   If those things
did happen, why is that information (apparently) not public?  (I
note that searches for "t-shirt" and "elephant" in the IPR
Disclosure database yields nothing, that there is no hint of
t-shirt designs on the Trust's "Trademarks, Patents, & Logos"
page, nor is there any information on the Trust's "Licenses",
"Assets", or "Contracts" pages that looks anything like t-shirt
designs.)

(3) If "the IETF" does own those rights, is there a reason for
not granting permission to reproduce the entire t-shirt design
without special authorization, much as that permission has been
granted for reproduction of RFCs?  Is there a plan to either
reproduce old t-shirts and sell (or auction) them to contribute
to the IETF LLC coffers or to sell off the right to do that?  If
so, where is that discussion reflected in minutes and why are
t-shirt designs not listed as assets of the IETF Trust?  And,
noting that, on quick inspection, I wasn't able to find any
authorization for the revised IETF Trust to sell assets, who
would do the selling (under IASA version 1, it was fairly clear
that the closely-linked IAOC could do that, but, with the
changes in the linkages, this might actually be a loose end).

I don't know if these questions are important in and of
themselves but, as we move forward, the ways in which things
like this are managed may be important examples of how we want
the new Trustees and the LLC Board to behave (or not behave and
the time to either get specific in documents or establish clear
precedents is probably now).

best,
    john

--On Friday, December 7, 2018 03:03 +0000 "Chengli (Cheng Li)"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi guys,
> 
> Good news,  IETF has approved that we can have the design of
> IETF 103 T-shirt for free, but only for the front image! That
> "elephant".
> 
> You can have the elephant at
> https://github.com/muzixing/ietf103-tshirt.
> 
> However, We CAN NOT use the back image of the T-shirt.
> 
> Regarding the Zen logo, if you want it, you can ask IETF for a
> LICENSE of using it for "non-trademark" purpose, and no money
> is needed.
> 
> Sounds good enough! Hope you and your family will like the
> elephant, Hahahaha. Thanks for liking it!
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Best Regards,
> Cheng

---

From: "Deen, Glenn (NBCUniversal)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2018 21:42:40 +0000

Hi John,

Let me attempt to clarify as I was the IETF Trustee who worked with Cheng on this, and I really want to clear up some of the assertions you've made.   

When Cheng says "The IETF" , it was the IETF Trust who is and was responsible for responding to his request on what would be involved in releasing the very beautiful IETF 103 shirt for others to print and reproduce.     

The Trust as part of its regular business is approached with requests to license assets which it owns and manages.  This one is no different from any other license request;  The Trust looks at it, determines if it actually has any assets involved in the request, and then responds.   

The Trust looked at the shirt and Cheng's request to enable the shirt to be made open for reproduction by anyone, conferred with the Trust's legal counsel, and concluded there were two issues in the request: (1) Copyright of the Elephant graphic; (2) Trademark issues around the IETF and other logos.

Unfortunately the way we speak casually to one another versus when speaking in more specific legal meanings has introduced some confusion here;   When Cheng says " IETF has approved that we can have the design of IETF 103 T-shirt...",  it doesn’t mean the IETF formally approved the use of Elephant design.    The Trust does not own the copyright to the Elephant image, so the actual thing that happened was the IETF Trust saying we have no objection and it's up to the copyright holder.

The answer that the Trust, after conferring with the Trust's legal counsel, gave on the copyrighted image to Cheng was:

               "The Trust has no objection to the copyright owner of the front image
               publishing that image under open license terms, such as any of the
               Creative Commons licenses."

As you can see the IETF Trust made no claim to the copyright of the image, nor is it taking on the license of the copyright from anyone.   

The Trust is not in the business of making T shirts, and the Trust does not hold the copyright of the images of the IETF meeting T shirts in its assets.  We do own trademarks on the IETF logo, more on that below.

This discussion did prompt the IETF LLC to add to the upcoming retreat agenda (https://www7.ietf.org/about/groups/llc-board/meeting-info/ ) a discussion on the Café Press store.  You'll note that this item is in the open session for observers on December 12th.

The IETF logo which is trademarked and owned by the IETF Trust is more difficult, as it’s a responsibility of the Trust as the mark owner to manage and protect it. For that you need to license it from the IETF Trust if any party wishes to produce it on anything from a web page to a T shirt or even sky writing.  

A bit of background for those readers who haven't been involved in hosting an IETF meeting and producing T shirts for it.    When someone hosts an IETF meeting they sign a legal contract in the form of a MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding) which among other things grants to them the use of IETF marks for their work as an IETF meeting host.   This grant enables the meeting host to produce T shirts with the IETF logo on them.   Production means to actually produce the shirts for the specific IETF meeting, not just design a layout.   

The T shirts typically have some artwork created by the host along with the host's trademarked company logo and the trademarked IETF logo. There are a bundle of legal rights owned by different parties tied up in the T shirt design, which is why having all the past IETF meeting shirts available as print on demand would require some work to gather all the needed rights from the parties that hold them.

The issue of the trademarked IETF logo, which had been licensed to Huawei for these shirts under the terms of their MOU as a meeting host, was something the IETF Trust does hold as an owned asset and is something the Trust is responsible for managing and protecting.    The Trust declined to grant a license for the use of the IETF logo into a shirt design which would be open for anyone to reproduce. That doesn't mean we aren't open to efforts to get great shirts like this one into people's hands; We said in the our response to Cheng (below) that we're open to further discussion which would involve finding a path that permitted use of the IETF mark but didn't violate the legal need to protect the mark so as to avoid losing it.

What we said to Cheng was:

           "The sleeve image and the back image raise
           more complex issues, however, and we would have limitations on our
           ability to enable open licensing. We’re open to further discussion,
           but the clearest answer we can give you right now is ‘no objection’
           to whatever licensing arrangements the copyright owner decides upon in
           connection with the front image, and ‘no’ to the question of further
           licensing of the back images."

This is all normal business for the IETF Trust, and didn’t involve any overreach.  No new license was granted, we made no claim on the image, and no assets were sold from the IETF Trust.  
.
One final personal comment:  It really was a nice shirt design.

Regards
Glenn Deen

On 12/10/18, 8:35 AM, "ietf on behalf of John C Klensin" <[email-masked] on behalf of [email-masked]> wrote:

    

    
    best,
        john

---

From: "Chengli (Cheng Li)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2018 09:48:34 +0000

Hi Deen, 

Sorry for using an inappropriate sentence that brings a little bit confusing!  It is my bad.

Also, many thanks for your hard work on my requirement and your explanation.  It really helps!! Thanks!

Thank you for your final personal comment as well, haha!

To John,

Ha, very sorry for misleading you. But that is a really nice catch!  Really professional! 

Thank you for bringing out an interesting discussion! I really like your concerns! Have learned a lot from them!

Many thanks again!   :) 

Best Regards,
Cheng 

-----Original Message-----
From: Deen, Glenn (NBCUniversal) [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 5:43 AM
To: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>; [email-masked]
Cc: Chengli (Cheng Li) <[email-masked]>; Deen, Glenn (NBCUniversal) <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] T-shirts and possible TF overreach??

Hi John,

Regards
Glenn Deen

    

    
    
    best,
        john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2018 08:06:02 -0500

Glenn,

Thanks for the explanation.   It does, however, suggest some
other things (partially as input to the upcoming retreat and
partially for the Nomcom and IESG as the appoint Trustees -- I
hope they are listening):

(1) Your explanation suggests that the Trustees need to be
considerably more expert on these issues than the typical IETF
participant.   I don't have any problems with that, but it
should affect who volunteers and how Trustees are selected from
the volunteer pool.

(2) To the extent to which, under IASA 2.0, the IETF Trust is
really expected to operate independently of the IETF LLC, even
if it is generally assumed that some coordination will be
needed), popping this into the LLC retreat agenda raises several
questions.   In particular, why is this a matter for the LLC
Board at this point rather than something for which the LLC
should await a recommendation from the Trustees?   The agenda
item seems to be only about the "IETF Café press store", an
entity that I did not know existed and for which a quick search
did not find any evidence of an existing contract (it may be
there; I just couldn't find it).  In any event, if the
discussion is just about the store, it wouldn't seem to involve
the Trust-related questions about what designs the store can
sell, which means it may not be germane to most of this
conversation.  Then, given your explanation of the reasons for
this retreat before a relatively more final Board (and Trustees)
are seated, is this topic sufficiently urgent that it must be
taken up immediately?  The answer may well be "yes" (e.g., if
there were a contract and it was about to expire), but I don't
think we have heard that explanation.

(3) The difference in expected expertise between Trustees and
ordinary IETF participants together with what you explain as the
difference between the vocabulary used in speaking casually to
one another versus when speaking in more specific legal meanings
suggests that the Trustees have considerable responsibility to
speak clearly to IETF participants and to educate the rest of us
about the issues.  I suggest that the IAD/IAOC/Trust under the
original IASA structure did a fairly poor job of that.   If we,
including the incoming Trustees, can learn from this event and
do much better along those educational and comprehensible
transparency dimensions, it will be a significant step forward.

best,
    john

p.s. While IANAL and you / the Trustees should certainly discuss
this with appropriate Counsel, my understanding is that you
could authorize exact reproduction (or exact reproduction with
the addition of a copyright or other IPR notice) of a complete
t-shirt that happened to include an IETF logo without creating
trademark issues with that logo.  That would presumably raise no
issues about rights to use copyrighted images that the original/
first batch didn't have unless there were specific licenses
associated with that use.  My mentioning the possible analogy to
exact reproduction of RFCs was not an accident (and I hope the
Trust is looking carefully at the RFC situation as the format
evolves from a single presentation for which "exact
reproduction" is clear into a more variable situation).

--On Monday, December 10, 2018 21:42 +0000 "Deen, Glenn
(NBCUniversal)" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi John,
> 
> Let me attempt to clarify as I was the IETF Trustee who worked
> with Cheng on this, and I really want to clear up some of the
> assertions you've made.   
> 
> When Cheng says "The IETF" , it was the IETF Trust who is and
> was responsible for responding to his request on what would be
> involved in releasing the very beautiful IETF 103 shirt for
> others to print and reproduce.     
> 
> The Trust as part of its regular business is approached with
> requests to license assets which it owns and manages.  This
> one is no different from any other license request;  The Trust
> looks at it, determines if it actually has any assets involved
> in the request, and then responds.   
> 
> The Trust looked at the shirt and Cheng's request to enable
> the shirt to be made open for reproduction by anyone,
> conferred with the Trust's legal counsel, and concluded there
> were two issues in the request: (1) Copyright of the Elephant
> graphic; (2) Trademark issues around the IETF and other logos.
> 
> Unfortunately the way we speak casually to one another versus
> when speaking in more specific legal meanings has introduced
> some confusion here;   When Cheng says " IETF has approved
> that we can have the design of IETF 103 T-shirt...",  it
> doesn't mean the IETF formally approved the use of Elephant
> design.    The Trust does not own the copyright to the
> Elephant image, so the actual thing that happened was the IETF
> Trust saying we have no objection and it's up to the copyright
> holder.
> 
> The answer that the Trust, after conferring with the Trust's
> legal counsel, gave on the copyrighted image to Cheng was:
> 
>                "The Trust has no objection to the copyright
> owner of the front image                publishing that image
> under open license terms, such as any of the
> As you can see the IETF Trust made no claim to the copyright
> of the image, nor is it taking on the license of the copyright
> from anyone.   
> 
> The Trust is not in the business of making T shirts, and the
> Trust does not hold the copyright of the images of the IETF
> meeting T shirts in its assets.  We do own trademarks on the
> IETF logo, more on that below.
> 
> This discussion did prompt the IETF LLC to add to the upcoming
> retreat agenda
> (https://www7.ietf.org/about/groups/llc-board/meeting-info/ )
> a discussion on the Café Press store.  You'll note that this
> item is in the open session for observers on December 12th.
> 
> The IETF logo which is trademarked and owned by the IETF Trust
> is more difficult, as it's a responsibility of the Trust as
> the mark owner to manage and protect it. For that you need to
> license it from the IETF Trust if any party wishes to produce
> it on anything from a web page to a T shirt or even sky
> writing.  
> 
> A bit of background for those readers who haven't been
> involved in hosting an IETF meeting and producing T shirts for
> it.    When someone hosts an IETF meeting they sign a legal
> contract in the form of a MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding)
> which among other things grants to them the use of IETF marks
> for their work as an IETF meeting host.   This grant enables
> the meeting host to produce T shirts with the IETF logo on
> them.   Production means to actually produce the shirts for
> the specific IETF meeting, not just design a layout.   
> 
> The T shirts typically have some artwork created by the host
> along with the host's trademarked company logo and the
> trademarked IETF logo. There are a bundle of legal rights
> owned by different parties tied up in the T shirt design,
> which is why having all the past IETF meeting shirts available
> as print on demand would require some work to gather all the
> needed rights from the parties that hold them.
> 
> The issue of the trademarked IETF logo, which had been
> licensed to Huawei for these shirts under the terms of their
> MOU as a meeting host, was something the IETF Trust does hold
> as an owned asset and is something the Trust is responsible
> for managing and protecting.    The Trust declined to grant a
> license for the use of the IETF logo into a shirt design which
> would be open for anyone to reproduce. That doesn't mean we
> aren't open to efforts to get great shirts like this one into
> people's hands; We said in the our response to Cheng (below)
> that we're open to further discussion which would involve
> finding a path that permitted use of the IETF mark but didn't
> violate the legal need to protect the mark so as to avoid
> losing it.
> 
>            more complex issues, however, and we would have
> limitations on our            ability to enable open
> licensing. We're open to further discussion,            but
> the clearest answer we can give you right now is 'no
> objection'            to whatever licensing arrangements the
> copyright owner decides upon in            connection with the
> front image, and 'no' to the question of further
> This is all normal business for the IETF Trust, and didn't
> involve any overreach.  No new license was granted, we made no
> claim on the image, and no assets were sold from the IETF
> Trust.   .
> On 12/10/18, 8:35 A്ഀ਀㸀 ഀ਀ഀ਀

---

From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2018 04:40:27 +0000 (UTC)

'The agenda
 item seems to be only about the "IETF Café press store", an
 entity that I did not know existed and for which a quick search
 did not find any evidence of an existing contract (it may be
 there; I just couldn't find it).'
I mentioned IETF Companions on Cafepress to this list as an unlikelypotential moneyspinner, back at the end of July.(AD Time thread, you can find it.)
https://www.cafepress.com.au/+ietf+t-shirts
https://www.cafepress.com.au/profile/20290804

looks, like, totes official and legit. All that's missing isthe link to it from the top of https://www.ietf.org/ , whichis currently recommending the very apposite DoH. Gottaadvertise the merch to boost sales and revenue, people.
L.
"no, not _another_ World IPv6 Day!"

(Speaking of which: ++ungood; is still alive and well,zombie-like... https://www.cafepress.com/ungood ) Lloyd Wood [email-masked] http://about.me/lloydwood

      From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
 To: "Deen, Glenn (NBCUniversal)" <[email-masked]> 
Cc: Chengli (Cheng Li) <[email-masked]>; [email-masked]
 Sent: Wednesday, 12 December 2018, 0:06
 Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] T-shirts and possible TF overreach??
   
Glenn,

best,
    john