Subject: [Gen-art] Gen-ART review of draft-hansen-2717bis-2718bis-uri-guidelines-05.txt

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:46:54 -0500

Background for those on the CC list, who may be unaware of GenART:
GenART is the Area Review Team for the General Area of the IETF.  We
advise the General Area Director (i.e. the IETF/IESG chair) by
providing more in depth reviews than he could do himself of documents
that come up for final decision in IESG telechat.  I was selected
as the GenART member to review this document.  Below is my review,
which was written specifically with an eye to the GenART process, but
since I believe that it will be useful to have these comments more
widely distributed, others outside the GenART group are being copied.

Intended status: Proposed Standard

Summary - this document is almost ready for publication. It has two 
nearly-editorial changes I'd like to see considered:

- the reader has to dig to notice that there are two kinds of URIs being 
registered with different requirements in the same namespace. It would 
be nice to say this pretty clearly ("These guidelines cover both 
provisional and permanent URI scheme registrations, which are part of 
the same URI namespace"), somewhere in Section 1.

- 2.8 tries to say, "avoid trademark names", but doesn't say much about 
why this is a good idea, or (more relevant) how big a problem you have 
when someone registers your scheme name as trademark. The current text 
is probably good advice, I'm just asking if there is more guidance that 
could be provided, too.

Spencer Dawkins

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From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:35:20 -0700

> Intended status: Proposed Standard

Interesting. The .XML says "Best Current Practice". The generated
.txt and .html don't, though. However, We're definitely
intending BCP, this isn't a standards track document.

> the same URI namespace"), somewhere in Section 1.

OK.
 
> is probably good advice, I'm just asking if there is more guidance that 

I think this is pretty fuzzy advice, alas. And there might be some
dragons (or at least aligators) waiting in those waters.  I don't
expect the "expert" doing "expert review" to review whether there is
a legal trademark and whether the proposed registration is or isn't
consistent with that trademark, in the various jurisdictions of the
world.

I guess we should ask the person submitting the registration to
assert that, as far as they know, the use of the URI scheme name
doesn't have trademark problems. I might want some advice on how
to word that, though.

Larry

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From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 07:32:35 -0500

> doesn't have trademark problems. I might want some advice on how

This would be very reasonable (once you figure out what the words should 
be!).

It may be that all you're trying to do is call the submitter's attention 
to section 7.4 of http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3978.txt, and say, "please 
do your best to keep us from getting sued if we come up with a scheme 
name that turns out to be a trademark" (a lawyer would, of course, say 
it differently :-)) This is actually less restrictive than the current 
text (current text discourages uses of trademarks, 3978 discourages use 
of trademarks unless the IETF has a right to use them in 
specifications), I think.

Spencer

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From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 09:58:10 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry Masinter [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 9:35 PM
> To: [email-masked]; 'Gen-Art Mailing List'; 
> [email-masked]; 'Ted Hardie'; 'Scott Hollenbeck'
> Subject: RE: Gen-ART review of 
> draft-hansen-2717bis-2718bis-uri-guidelines-05.txt
> 

The last call announcement and ID Tracker both say "BCP", so at least that
part of the process is correct.

-Scott-

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From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 10:12:23 -0400

How about:

   Avoid names or other symbols that might have problems with
   the 'ownership' or rights to use the name in Internet protocols.
   For example, be careful with trademark and service mark names.
   (Also see section 7.4 of RFC 3978.)

	Tony

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>>> - 2.8 tries to say, "avoid trademark names", but doesn't say much
>>> about why this is a good idea, or (more relevant) how big a problem
>>> you have when someone registers your scheme name as trademark. The
>>> current text is probably good advice, I'm just asking if there is
>>> more guidance that could be provided, too.
>>

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From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 12:46:42 -0500

Tony Hansen wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> How about:
> 

This seems very reasonable (I think it may be "rights to use the name in 
Internet protocol specifications", but certainly close enough for 
standards work :-))

Spencer

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From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:07:08 -0700

Are registration forms and IANA submissions, in general, "Contributions
to the IETF", and subject to RFC 3978?

Of we're no longer requiring the registrations to appear
within an Internet Draft, do they at least need to include
the Internet Draft disclaimer about IPR?

Larry

> From: Spencer Dawkins [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 10:47 AM
> To: Tony Hansen
> Cc: Larry Masinter; 'Gen-Art Mailing List'; 
> Subject: Re: Gen-ART review of