Advice on Trademark Issues requested

[Rainer Gerhards <rgerhards@hq.adiscon.com>]

Hi WG,

I thought that "structured data element" is a bit lengthy and was tempted to replace it by the abbreviation "SDE" in the protcol-02 darft. However, I found that this is a trademark. Than, I did some trademark searchon TAG, and voilá, it too is trademarked. I didn't bother to dig for the other abbreviations, but I think some of them will be the same as existing trademarks.

I would appreciate advise from someone with experience on this issue. Is it really an issue? Can I use "SDE" or need I to stick with the longer form?

Any help is deeply appreciated,
Rainer