Call for Public Comment on IANA IPR Agreements

Today, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Trust, the operational communities, and ICANN announced a call for public comment, soliciting feedback on draft agreements designed to address a requirement from the Proposal to Transition the Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions from the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to the Global Multistakeholder Community [PDF, 2.3 MB]. The Proposal required that the domain names that ICANN uses to perform the IANA functions and the IANA trademarks (the "IANA IPR") be transferred to an entity independent of the IANA Functions Operator, and held for the benefit of the entire community.

This call for public comment seeks community input on three agreements concerning the IANA IPR developed by the community to meet this requirement from the Proposal:

• IANA IPR Assignment Agreement
• IANA IPR License Agreement (model)
• IANA IPR Community Agreement

The ICG web site is being used as a neutral site to host this call for public comment, but the agreements are not a product of the ICG. After public comment inputs are reviewed and considered, the agreements will be finalized. The agreements are expected to be signed upon successful completion of the IANA Stewardship Transition.

ICANN is a party to some of the agreements posted for comment:

• The IANA IPR Assignment Agreement, through which ICANN will transfer the IANA IPR to the IETF Trust
• Three IANA IPR License Agreements, through which the IETF Trust will license back to ICANN the rights to use that IANA IPR in the performance of the IANA functions. There will be three IANA IPR License Agreements, so that there is one representing each portion of the IANA functions (naming, numbering and protocol parameters). The Community Agreement sets out how the naming, numbering and protocol parameters communities will work together with the IETF Trust.

Comments are due by 12 September 2016 at 23:59 UTC. Comments should be submitted via email to IANAIPRpubliccomment@ianacg.org. Commenters should clearly reference to which of the agreement(s) their comments apply. For more detailed information, please visit https://www.ianacg.org/call-for-public-comment-on-iana-ipr-agreements/.