[CWG-Stewardship] Fwd: [Internal-cg] Status of IPR topic in the CWG

Fri Jul 17 08:31:42 UTC 2015

Hi Alissa,

As the one writing to Sidley I will give you the background for the request.
Below are the notes from the CWG meeting on July 9th where the group
discussed the IPR and my further comments:

“Client committee met briefly prior to this meeting, preceded by an informal
meeting of the members of the client committee yesterday

•        Ongoing concern with regard to prudent use of legal resources and
manage cost effectively. Chairs of CWG, CCWG, ICANN legal and finance met to
discuss how to effectively manage resources and costs. Proposal to include
legal fees in the remit of the client committee, in conjunction with ICANN
staff. No questions or objections raised to this approach.

•        Main points discussed during today's meeting were: 1) IANA
Trademark / IPR - request was received from the ICG to provide an update
with the chairs did confirming that CWG-Stewardship is silent on what to do
with IANA trademark. ICANN Board also provided input to ICG on this topic
(see
http://mm.ianacg.org/pipermail/internal-cg_ianacg.org/2015-July/000814.html)
. 

CWG-Stewardship to determine whether or not it should take a position on
this issue. Two options - remain silent (maintain status quo, and rely on
commitment from from ICANN Board) or ask Sidley for expert input to evaluate
what the options are from the CWG-Stewardship's point of view. Other
communities have indicated their preference to move it to IETF trust - based
on conversations with IANAPLAN and CRISP, those groups have indicated that
they are not planning to make any changes to their proposal, unless
CWG-Stewardship would come forward with input that would conflict with their
proposed approach. Should this be handled by Sidley or ICANN legal team,
also taking into account desire to be prudent with regards to costs? Would
first need to confirm with other communities if they would be comfortable
with the ICANN legal team - if not, it would not make any sense to approach
ICANN legal (who might also engage external expertise to address this
issue). Other communities have also indicated willingness to share
information concerning the legal advice that they have obtained. Likely that
ICANN Legal input would be similar to the response provided by the ICANN
Board, which is likely not acceptable by the other communities. However, if
this input is provided by an independent party, such as Sidley, it might be
received differently. Need to distinguish between advice on trademark law
and insight into ICANN's position, where the former is what is likely needed
as latter is already known. ICG would likely move forward with proposal to
move trademark to a trust (IETF) unless the other communities indicate that
this would not be acceptable. A non-decision is not desirable - as such CWG
should get expert advice to base its position on whether it is in agreement
with the current proposal or whether an alternative proposal is preferred.
Sidley could be asked to conduct a stress-test approach; what risks exists
with each approach from a CWG-Stewardship perspective. Evaluate these in
view of ICANN's position and the proposal from the other communities to
determine what is optimal and/or acceptable. As a point of information,
there are 3 trademarks involved: (i) "Internet Assigned Numbers Authority,"
(ii) "IANA" and (iii) the IANA Logo, which consists of IANA in stylized
letters plus Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

Action item: Client committee to scope the work concerning IPR based on
CWG-Stewardship discussion and will ask for an indication from Sidley on
hours/ budget involved to undertake this work. Client committee to instruct
Sidley to talk to ICANN legal to obtain further insight and background to
the IPR issue (possibly with involvement of other members of the CWG) - also
consider involving other communities.”

So we plan to have an assessment from Sidley on the issue and to involve the
other communities regarding this. The reason to ask for an analysis on
different scenarios is to have the full picture of any issues that might
arise. 

We have been told that such an analysis doesn’t take long, and we are asking
for a quote in order to be cost-conscious. If this turns out to be too
expensive or too lengthy the plan B will  be to get back to CWG and discuss
a new approach to the IP issue.

Best,

Lise

Fra: cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org
[mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org] På vegne af Alissa Cooper
Sendt: 16. juli 2015 19:22
Til: cwg-stewardship at icann.org IANA
Emne: [CWG-Stewardship] Fwd: [Internal-cg] Status of IPR topic in the CWG

Could someone shed light on the questions posed by Manal below?

Thanks,

Alissa

Begin forwarded message:

From: Manal Ismail <manal at tra.gov.eg>

Subject: Re: [Internal-cg] Status of IPR topic in the CWG

Date: July 16, 2015 at 2:38:40 AM PDT

To: Lynn St.Amour <Lynn at LStAmour.org>, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>

Cc: IANA etc etc Coordination Group <internal-cg at ianacg.org>

I also don't understand what's the timeline of this and more importantly
what's the fallback scenario in case this requires many hours and turn to be
out of budget ..
Kind Regards
--Manal

-----Original Message-----
From: Internal-cg [mailto:internal-cg-bounces at ianacg.org] On Behalf Of Lynn
St.Amour
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 11:37 PM
To: Milton L Mueller
Cc: IANA etc etc Coordination Group
Subject: Re: [Internal-cg] Status of IPR topic in the CWG

Hi Milton,

I don't understand it either, and that would be a good question for the CWG.

Lynn

On Jul 15, 2015, at 5:25 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

I  do not understand this outcome. I can understand asking lawyers to figure
out alternative ways to do what the CRISP team suggested (namely, make the
trademarks and domain independent of any specific IANA functions operator),
but the first two options are not, in fact, options, because they don't meet
that criterion. In other words, why would CWG be seriously considering
options that are going to cause compatibility problems?

From: Internal-cg [mailto:internal-cg-bounces at ianacg.org] On Behalf Of
Alissa Cooper
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 10:27 AM
To: IANA etc etc Coordination Group
Subject: [Internal-cg] Status of IPR topic in the CWG

The CWG had a call last week and one of the action items resulting from the
call was as follows:

Action item: Client committee to scope the work concerning IPR based on
CWG-Stewardship discussion and will ask for an indication from Sidley on
hours/ budget involved to undertake this work. Client committee to instruct
Sidley to talk to ICANN legal to obtain further insight and background to
the IPR issue (possibly with involvement of other members of the CWG) - also
consider involving other communities.

The client committee consists of CWG participants and legal advisors from
their independent law firm, Sidley. CWG co-chair Lise Fuhr has since taken
the action:
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-client/2015-July/000252.html>. As you can
see, the CWG is asking Sidley for a quote of how many hours of work Sidley
would require to evaluate three scenarios: "IANA's IPR either: (i) stays
with ICANN; (ii) goes to PTI; or (iii) goes into trust (IETF, mutual
trust)." My understanding is that once they receive the quote they will
decide whether to ask Sidley to do this work and whether to use the output
of that work to help form a CWG position as regards the IANA IPR.

Folks who have been participating in the CWG should correct the above if
it's wrong.

Alissa

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