<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">My replies are inline below.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Mueller, Milton L <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:milton.mueller@pubpolicy.gatech.edu" target="_blank">milton.mueller@pubpolicy.gatech.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.15in"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Greg Shatan [mailto:<a href="mailto:gregshatanipc@gmail.com" target="_blank">gregshatanipc@gmail.com</a>]
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">MM: All three communities are based on registries grounded in IETF standards. There is no more appropriate
place for the 3 communities’ IANA requirements to converge than at IETF.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"></span><span style="font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif">GS: The fact that IETF sets standards that are then used by two operational communities does not in any way qualify the IETF or its Trust
as a sole owner of an asset used to refer to services provided to all three communities by the provider of those services.</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">MM: Incorrect. The identity of the IANA, as you have been informed several times now, resides in IETF RFCs. The “three communities” to which you refer are organized
around registries that implement IETF standards. The “services” to which you refer are merely outsourced secretarial functions which keep those registries consistent. While each community gets to pick its clerical provider of those functions, the source and
origin of the IANA is still the IETF.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">GS: This analysis is incorrect, as explained in more detail in my reply to Andrew Sullivan a little while ago. Many good and important things may reside in IETF RFCs, but the "identity of the IANA" is not one of them. That is not consistent with what trademarks stand for, or what trademark "source" means. A brand identity is associated with the entity that is responsible for carrying out a service, whether directly or because they exercise quality control and are seen as the provider of the service being received. While ICANN, in its IANA role, may implement IETF standards, that does not mean that ICANN is offering IETF-supervised or controlled services. Trying to cast the IANA functions as mere "secretarial" or "clerical" services is a nice rhetorical flourish, but it doesn't hold water or change the analysis. In any event if the IETF has been the rightful owner and operator of the IANA brand and mark, they've done a terrible job of it from a trademark point of view -- they haven't registered it, they haven't entered into licenses, they did not challenge ICANN or its predecessor's claim to be the rightful owners of the mark when they registered the marks, they did not seek to cancel the trademark registrations or have them assigned to the IETF. However, I don't think this is because the did a terrible job at all. It's because this was never the IETF's job, because they never were the owner and operator of "IANA brand" services.</div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"> That doesn't mean they can't be, in the future. It does mean that the idea of predestination is false.</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><div style="border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt"><div><div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">MM: So since you want ICANN to hold the mark this means that you want ICANN to “become the INTERNET
ASSIGNED NUMBERS AUTHORITY? Permanently…? No separability, no accountability.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"></span><span style="font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif">GS: That completely mischaracterizes my position, or is at least </span></p><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">way out of</div> date. Just because you remain a committed advocate for the
CRISP solution does not mean that I am your antithesis. My position since Buenos Aires (if not slightly before) is that I have an open mind<span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></span><p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">MM: I see no evidence of this. I see a very firm commitment to ICANN retaining the IPR. See below.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">GS: I've stated my position before and that is not my position. I have absolutely no commitment to ICANN retaining the IANA trademarks and domain names. While there are challenges and pros and cons to any of the potential scenarios for ownership of the IANA trademarks, none of these challenges are insurmountable. There is no "very firm commitment to ICANN retaining the IPR" to be seen.</div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><div style="border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt"><div><div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p><span class="">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif">but that we need to conduct our own analysis of the potential outcomes</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"></span><span style="font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif">. If ICANN
retains ownership of the IANA and INTERNET ASSIGNED NUMBERS AUTHORITY trademark, thee is no reason that it would be permanent, nor have I ever said so at any time. If all 3 communities chose a new IFO, putting ICANN out of the "IANA business," it would be
entirely appropriate for the new IFO, as the new IANA, to be assigned the trademarks as well.<span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif">This could all be taken care of in contracts and in the ICANN Bylaws, to assure that it would in fact take place.<span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></span></p>
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</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">MM: I have a bit of experience, 30 years to be exact, in telecommunications regulation and have observed efforts to use regulations, contracts, etc. to make an
incumbent monopoly treat competitors in a nondiscriminatory fashion and allow customers to switch to new providers without throwing up obstacles. The method you describe never works. Never. The incumbent has so much discretion, so much inertia on its side,
and so much advance knowledge of the process. The only thing that has ever really worked cleanly is structural separation. This isn’t about “permanent mistrust of ICANN” per se, it’s about knowing something about economics, regulation, switching costs, and
basic economic incentives. <u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">And you still have never explained why you are so mistrustful of an IETF Trust when it has zero incentives and zero benefits to be gained by messing with the
trademarks. A person with an open mind wouldn’t use such a double standard.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">GS: I also have a bit of experience (only 29 years) dealing with contracts of various types and litigation over contracts, and about 15 years of experience in antitrust law (much of that in merger antitrust analysis, with ample experience in dealing with barriers to entry, sunk costs, potential monopolistic behavior, etc.) in both regulated and unregulated industries. So I can't claim to be an economist (that would be silly), but I can claim to know something about the elements you mentioned, and I've had to give them significant thought in numerous practical situations with a lot on the line. A few lines up, you were describing this as a secretarial, clerical function, entirely governed by the IETF.</div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"> Now, ICANN is a monopolist with discretion, inertia, special knowledge, etc. The two views don't line up. I think the above statement overstates the case for ICANN as uncontrollable monopolistic bully.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">As for the IETF Trust, I am in no way mistrustful of it, nor am I applying a double standard. As I've said before (and so have others), accountability is not only for dysfunctional entities. Indeed, it's the very basis of our entire exercise in both the CWG and CCWG. We've all put a lot of work into methods for holding ICANN accountable (and I hope your pessimism about their monopolistic tendencies doesn't cause you to believe we've wasted our time). Even if the IETF Trust might not trigger accountability mechanisms as often as one might think ICANN will, that doesn't exempt it from a robust accountability framework with regard to all the communities. It's clearly already highly accountable to the IETF (and essentially, only to the IETF).</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><div style="border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt"><div><div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> <u></u>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"></span><span style="font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif">GS: There's no distortion here. The services may be provided by PTI by permission of the names
</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"></span><span style="font-family:"Verdana",sans-serif">community, but PTI's ability to use IANA and INTERNET ASSIGNED NUMBERS AUTHORITY as its trademarks and trade names comes by permission (or more accurately,
license) from the IETF Trust, if the IETF Trust becomes the brandowner. This license, like any trademark license, must contain quality control provisions which put the IETF Trust in an oversight and control position over PTI. <span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></span></p>
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</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">MM: I think you are distorting this, partly based on your understanding of how commercially motivated firms administer trademarks, partly because you really are
committed to ICANN retaining the marks. The IETF Trust would administer the marks not to impose its service standards on PTI but only to ensure that the marks are separate from the IFO and licensed to any IFO duly designated by each operational community.
You can’t tell me that good TM lawyers can’t figure out a way to confine IETF Trust to that role.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">GS: First, let me again dismiss the base canard that I am in any way committed to ICANN retaining the marks. Canards may be good for confit, but they don't do much for rational discussion. There's a certain straightforward logic in have the current trademark owner, and the only entity using the trademarks in a trademark sense, retain the trademarks. On the other hand, there is also a logic, as we shift oversight and accountability of the IANA functions to the global multistakeholder community, to shifting ownership of the marks to the global multistakeholder community as well.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">Again, there's no distortion here. I have worked with a number of non-profits and charitable organizations on trademark matters, as well as with "commercially motivated" firms. There are certain baseline legal obligations that a trademark owner has, regardless of its "commercial motivations." This is an area where trademarks are different from copyrights and patents, both in the essential nature of the asset and in the obligations that a trademark owner has. A copyright owner or patent owner has no legal obligation to oversee or maintain quality in its licensee's activities or outputs.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">For a copyright owner, it would make good commercial sense, since a bad cover version or movie would have a negative effect on value, but there's no legal requirement. For a patent owner, there's no overriding reason to do so. In contrast, quality control is the bedrock of trademark licensing. Without adequate quality control (and policing and enforcement) in contract and in fact, the trademark asset itself will become diluted and ultimately abandoned. So, any trademark owner, including the IETF Trust, must impose quality control standards over its licensees. It cannot be a passive licensee. Even "passive quality control" is the kiss of death. Furthermore the trademark owner must have an active role and at least some discretion in choosing who to license to and who not to license to.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">That said, there are plenty of ways to be creative in implementing a trademark license and in designating (or creating or modifying) an appropriate trademark licensing entity. And that includes ways to modify the IETF Trust so it would be an appropriate entity for the communities to choose as the owner of the IANA trademarks and domain names, and ways to fashion a trademark license between the IETF Trust and ICANN to both minimize the quality control aspects of the relationship and to give the operation communities a great deal of control over the IETF Trust's latitude in that regard. It's actually quite an interesting project, and I will put a separate email together on this matter; maybe even tonight but more likely tomorrow. I have already sent an email with some thoughts on how the IETF Trust would need to be modified if it were to hold the marks (which would also apply to a new entity if that route were taken). </div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">The short answer is that the IETF Trust (or any other trademark owner) cannot be "confined" to the role you imagine, but it can be "domesticated."</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><div style="border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt"><div><div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">And if you can’t, you will have a very hard time convincing people of your second point, which is that ICANN’s bylaws and contracts can be magically written to
erase its conflict of interest in transferring the marks to a new operator.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">GS: I don't believe there's any magic needed, were ICANN to continue as the owner of the marks. I'm more optimistic about the work we've done in this group and the CCWG Accountability, and maybe even more optimistic about ICANN's incentives not to act like a monopolistic pig. I think all of the options are viable from both a legal and practical standpoint. However, given the ICANN board's recent announcement</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">, this is probably moot.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><div style="border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt"><div><div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> <u></u>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">You have consistently failed to escape this basic contradiction in your position. If you can make ICANN a nondiscriminatory holder of the marks who willingly
licenses them to its competitors, or whoever the communities designate as their IFO, why can’t you do the same for IETF Trust? And doesn’t it make more sense for IETF, which has no conflict of interest, to be in that role than ICANN? And isn’t that why CRISP
team proposed it to begin with?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> </span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">GS: I never, ever said that what could be done for ICANN couldn't be done for the IETF Trust. You have misunderstood my analysis of the possibility of ICANN as a continued holder of the mark to state a position favoring that outcome. As I've said before, in and since Buenos Aires, I have an open mind, and all of the options are viable. (</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">I would not characterize the potential licensing to replacement IANA operators as licenses to ICANN's competitors, except in the broadest possible sense, but that's a minor point.) </div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">The position I _do_ have is that the CWG and the names community should have been able to freely analyze the options on an equal footing with the other two communities. For reasons I don't fully understand and that are not worth re-hashing or analyzing, we no longer have that latitude. Given the ICANN Board's recent announcement, there's really no reason to continue discussing ICANN retaining the marks (although I happen to think that the Board's announcement usurped the names community's right to make that decision, but that right had already been pretty much eliminated anyway).</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">However, I would not be so quick to say that the IETF Trust "has no conflict of interest." It's a completely different kind of conflict of interest from that of ICANN-the-corporation, which relates to remaining as the incumbent IFO. It's more analogous to the conflict of interest that would exist if there was a freestanding "names organization" nominated to hold the IANA trademarks on behalf of all three communities. This does not come from any inherent mistrust of the IETF Trust. Rather it follows from the logic stated at the very beginning -- that a trademark owner accountable to and representative of the multistakeholder community should be what we seek in this scenario, and from the belief that we cannot magically stop talking about accountability when we start talking about the IETF Trust.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">What makes sense at this point is to discuss what would need to be done to the IETF Trust to make it an appropriate owner of the marks, whether the IETF, CRISP and CWG can come to an understanding on those modifications, and what a license to ICANN would need to look like to deal with both operational and separational phases to meet the needs of all 3 communities, the trademark owner and ICANN.</div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;display:inline">Greg</div></div></div><br></div></div>