[whatwg] HTML 5: Wording of "license" link type is too narrow

[Kristof Zelechovski]

The correct markup for a link trademark license would be 
<A HREF="tmlic.html" />™</A >
A trademark license does not apply to a Web page.  It may of course apply to
the product described on the page but such information is meaningless to
HTML spiders and publishing tools; information an HTML-ignorant end user is
expected to make use of should be exposed in the language she understands,
not with specially dedicated HTML markup.
That is, of course, IMHO - I am not a lawyer.
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org
[mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Arne Johannessen
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 10:24 AM
To: Ian Hickson
Cc: WHAT WG List; public-html-comments at w3.org
Subject: Re: [whatwg] HTML 5: Wording of "license" link type is too narrow

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Feb 2008, Dave Hodder wrote:
>>
>> The scope of the "license" link type in section 4.12.3 seems too  
>> narrow
>> to me.  It's presently described like this:
>>
>>    Indicates that the current document is covered by the copyright
>>    license described by the referenced document.
>>
>> I think the word "copyright" should be removed, allowing other  
>> types of
>> intellectual property licence to be specified as well.  As a use  
>> case,
>> take for example a piece of documentation that is Apache-licensed:
>>
>>    <p>This piece of useful documentation may be used under the
>>    terms of the <a rel="license"
>>    ref="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0">Apache License,
>>    Version 2.0</a>.  Please note that Example™ is a trademark
>>    of Example.com Enterprises.</p>
>>
>> The license link not only refers to copyright law, but also trademark
>> law and patent law.
>
> Sure, the license can cover things other than copyright. But it is
> primarily a copyright license, and that is the part that the  
> rel="license"
> keyword is referring to. The copyright license being part and parcel  
> of a
> bigger license isn't a problem, IMHO.

Agreed.


> In particular, we don't want people to use rel=license to point to
> trademark licenses or patent licenses that _aren't_ copyright  
> licenses.

Why not, what's the downside?

What is the correct way to mark up links to, say, a trademark license  
_not_ covering copyright, given the current draft of the spec?

-- 
Arne Johannessen