Re: draft-ietf-ipr-trademarks-00.txt

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no>]

--On 4. februar 2005 00:56 +0100 Simon Josefsson <jas at extundo.com> wrote:

> In section 3, it says:
>
>    If no statement has been filed with the IETF about a term or phrase
>    that is marked in a contribution as a trademark or service mark it
>    is reasonable to assume that references to the term or phrase in
>    product text, documentation and advertising material is permitted
>    but that using the term or phrase as the name of a product requires
>    permission from the holder of the mark.
>
> That paragraph seem unfinished to me.  "Reasonable" to whom?  The
> suggested interpretation is not binding for anyone, nor is it the only
> interpretation.  At worst, this appear to permit abusive or
> discriminatory behavior wrt trademarks.

My worry about not having any such statement is that it imposes a heavy 
system burden in that one must choose between:

1) not identifying trademarks even when one knows that they are present, 
thus hiding information in standards (never a good idea)
2) sending in an IPR disclosure for every trademark in every draft 
submitted, thus introducing a new, heavy load on the IPR notice filing 
sytem, dwarfing its important duty to identify patent disclosures, without 
any corresponding benefit

I believe that in all jurisdictions, there exist norms for which uses of 
trademarks are "non-infringing" - I would like the document to reflect a 
reasonable norm in this area.

I'm sure the specific text can be improved.

                      Harald






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