Hi all,
thank the german railways that messed up my trip. So I found some
corner to do some more work on this. I'm currently offline, but will
commit the changes when I'm back online.
More comments in line...
On Tuesday 10 March 2009, Francois Daoust wrote:
> Just to set the context, there are two documents:
>
> 1. the W3C mobileOK Logo and Policy page:
> http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2008/04-mobileok-policy.html
> Edited by team-legal.
> The document needs a few updates, and the working group also has
> a few legal questions. See below.
>
> 2. the W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-mobileOK-20081117/
> Edited by the Mobile Web Best Practice WG.
> The doc is to be published as a Working Group note.
> The doc is mostly done, and only needs refining based on the
> modifications brought to the mobileOK Policy.
>
> The following are the initial questions raised by Jo, slightly
> updated with a couple of comments.
>
> Rigo, do you think you can have a look, update the license
> accordingly and answer the remaining questions (or ask for
> clarification) by 25 March when the WG is to have a F2F?
>
>
> Under 1.
> -----
> 1. "mobileOK® how to page" should be replaced by "W3C mobileOK
> Scheme 1.0 document" and the URI by
> "http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK/".
Done
>
> 2. The license calls the logo a "pictogram" while it is referred to
> as "Trustmark" and "Icon" in the Scheme doc. Is that intentional? I
> suppose we need to be consistent in both documents.
Changed to "Icon" consistently
>
> Under 2.1
> -----
> 3. As discussed at the F2F the object of conformance is a URI/IRI.
> Rigo, could you rewrite the first bullet to something along the
> lines of the scheme document:
> "A claim of mobileOK conformance may only be made of a URI that
> when dereferenced in the manner described in [mobileOK] yields a
> response that passes all the tests contained in mobileOK Basic
> Tests 1.0"? Should the license explicitly mention IRI, or is URI
> enough?
I also indicated IRIs now, but the meaning is clear even if we only
use URI as a term.
>
>
> The following questions are linked and are about the definition of
> a claim in itself:
>
> 4. Jo wonders what constitutes a claim of conformance. "This Web
> page is mobileOK(R) conformant"?
Normally, I wanted to leave that open, because what is a claim and
what isn't has to be determined by trademark law. But I integrated
some definition of what a claim is into the document to make non-
lawyers more comfortable.
>
> 5. Although it was the intention that conformance could be claimed
> against sets of pages (especially a Web site, whatever that is),
> how would one assert such a claim?
I have wording for that in the second bullet point of section 2.2.
While this may be difficult in technology, the description is rather
easy in the legal text.
>
> 6. What, if anything, are the rules governing use of the string
> mobileOK outside of a claim? e.g. W3C "today introduced licensing
> terms for mobileOK"? Also do we need to do anything special in the
> tech docs that themselves describe mobileOK?
Here you touch on the "soft" part or "complex" part of the applicable
legal regime. Trademark law only applies to commercial speech and
normal use of a string outside commercial activities is not in scope.
So talking about "mobileOK" on a mailing-list is just out of scope of
the application field of the trademark protection. But if one would
make the claim that example.com is mobileOK, whether on radio,
mailing-list or some other public means of communication, this would
be a claim of conformance that would be subject to our license.
>
> I add another question to this list:
> 6bis. The scheme document mentions the possibility to use a
> machine-readable claim, using:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/BPWG/Group/Drafts/mobileOK-Trustmark/200
>81114.html#powderClaim The policy does not talk about that. Should
> it? I suppose the answer is "no" because there is no registered
> trademark e.g. for
> "http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobileOK#Conformant". In that case, what
> prevents the Powder claim from being used in non-mobileOK pages
> then? In other words, on what legal grounds could we contact
> someone that uses such a machine readable claim incorrectly?
Again, for the legal appreciation of a certain claim, it is rather
simple. Section 2.2 of the license clearly says that if there is a
claim on multiple URIs, expressed in POWDER or as in "my example.com
site is mobileOK", ALL URIs must not fail any mobile-basic test.
So legal language is much more flexible on the way a certain claim is
made, whether by machine or by an individual, whether by newspaper,
advertisement on walls or by IP via pigeons.
>
>
> Under 2.2
> -----
> 7. The first bullet should read:
> "All tests detailed in mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 have to be
> accomplished with a PASS or a warn"
> ... i.e. there is no notion of "tests applicable to the resource",
> as discussed during the F2F, all tests are always applicable. It
> might even be better to say:
> "None of the tests detailed in mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 can FAIL"
>
> 8. The second bullet should go as there are no conformance
> conditions other than the above.
fixed all of those
>
>
> Under 3.1
> -----
> 9. First bullet - per comment 7, remove "applicable to works".
>
> 10. Second bullet - per comment 8, should be dropped.
>
> 11. Third bullet - there was discussion about decorating this with
> a date but I hope that doesn't come to pass. I'm wondering at the
> back of my mind whether it's OK to insist on this string, no matter
> what the language of the content? Also how does this work for the
> accessibility folks?
>
>
> Under 3.2
> -----
> 12. First bullet - see comment 7, should be "All tests detailed in
> mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0"
>
> 13. Second bullet - see comment 8, should be dropped.
all fixed by including a reference to 2.2 rather than duplicating the
text in 3. as the conditions for copyright-license for the logo are
actually the same as for using the trademark.
>
> 14. Neither document says that the logo must link anywhere to
> explain what it means, for example.
I think this is on purpose. Google will do the trick. Linking to some
W3C page will just overload overloaded W3C servers. But the BPWG could
do the same as the HTML validator and require that the logo links to a
validator that would test the URI in question. I'm sure Dom could come
up with a code snippet that I could include into the license.
>
>
> Overall
> -----
> 15. There is the use case of using the string and/or the pictogram
> on links with "see our mobileOK Web site" in pages that are not
> mobileOK themselves. Can (and should) this be part of the policy?
A claim has more than one part. The mobileOK part is just a shortcut
to tell that something is compliant to mobileOK basic. But alone, this
statement does not make sense. It is always linked to a URI.
But I see that you're assuming that using the logo on some page that
is itself not compliant may be an issue, because using the logo on
that non-compliant page makes the implicit assertion that the page is
actually mobileOK. I think the implicit assertion is a feature, not a
bug. At the same time, if the statement on the non-compliant page says
"compliant.example.org is mobileOK", it is a valid assertion that
fulfills all the criteria set forth in mobileOK scheme and license. So
for the legal consequences, the important thing is not where the
statement is made, but whether the statement is valid. Displaying the
Icon on a non-compliant page makes an implicit statement that is
wrong. Making a valid assertion on a non-compliant page is perfectly
permissible. But as said, this requires a full statement including the
URI (or set of URIs) for which the claim is made.
Best,
Rigo