Governance
Contents
The FCL Standard Foundation
The FCL Standard Foundation exists to keep the FCL family of permission standards open, independent, interoperable, and trustworthy enough for people with different interests to use together.
FCL is intended to serve rights holders, creators, performers, platforms, marketplaces, technology companies, and implementers.
Those groups do not always want the same things.
A rights holder wants control.
A creator needs reliable permission.
A performer needs meaningful consent.
A platform needs rules it can implement.
An operator needs room to compete.
And none of them should have to surrender control of the standard to another in order to participate.
That is why the standard has an independent nonprofit custodian.
The FCL Standard Foundation maintains the specifications, develops interoperability rules, is developing the certification framework, serves as custodian of the certification marks, publishes revisions, and provides the institutional home in which the standards can be challenged, tested, and improved.
Its role is deliberately narrower than the ecosystem it supports.
Ownership, licensing decisions, commercial terms, and enforcement remain with the parties entitled to make those decisions. The Foundation maintains the common language, certification framework, and institutional processes through which those decisions can be expressed and relied upon consistently.
Current organizational status
CUSTODIAN
FCL Standard Foundation, a West Virginia nonprofit corporation
FORMED
24 March 2026
IDENTIFIERS
UBI UD002649895001 · EIN 41-5076470
TAX STATUS
Not tax-exempt · §501(c)(3) application in preparation
THIS PAGE
Originally published 27 August 2026 · versioned, changes logged
The Foundation is newly formed and currently has a single director.
Independent directors will be seated before the Foundation applies for recognition of exemption under §501(c)(3). That application is in preparation.
The Foundation is not currently a tax-exempt organization and does not represent itself as one.
Where this page describes future governance structures, certification processes, working groups, or services, those structures should be understood as proposed or not yet operational unless expressly stated otherwise.
Transparency about that distinction is part of the governance model.
What the Foundation is responsible for
The Foundation serves as custodian of the FCL family of standards.
Its responsibilities include:
maintaining and publishing the FCL specifications;
developing interoperability rules with adjacent standards;
maintaining the certification framework;
controlling authorized use of FCL certification marks;
publishing version histories and proposed changes;
accepting public comment and change proposals;
developing conformance and certification requirements;
coordinating future working groups;
preserving the independence and vendor neutrality of the standard; and
providing a durable institutional home for the framework as participation expands.
The Foundation maintains the standard. Individual permissions expressed through that standard remain with the parties legally authorized to grant them.
The specifications
The current core specification is FCL-CORE-0.1.2.
It is a draft published openly for review and implementation under CC BY 4.0.
Implementation of the specification is royalty-free.
The Foundation asserts no patent claims over the specification or its implementation and contemplates none. Contributors to future versions will be asked to make the same commitment as a condition of contribution.
The specifications are intentionally being published before the architecture is considered finished.
Known unresolved questions are identified openly so they can be examined before implementation and widespread reliance.
That is deliberate.
The purpose of publishing a 0.x standard is to give outside parties the opportunity to find defects, conflicts, legal problems, technical weaknesses, interoperability failures, and unintended consequences before anyone is asked to rely heavily upon it.
Current companion specifications include:
FCL-RSL-BINDING-0.1
Defines interoperability between the FCL framework and Really Simple Licensing.
FCL-REGISTRY-MARK-0.1
Defines the proposed registry model and the relationship between registry records and FCL certification marks.
FCL-CERTIFICATION-RULES-0.1
Defines the developing framework for certification eligibility, audits, economic transparency, suspension, appeals, and vendor neutrality.
Publication of a specification does not mean the infrastructure or certification program it describes is already operational.
The standards are expected to evolve as implementation, legal review, interoperability work, and public comment reveal better answers.
The purpose of versioning is to let them evolve without rewriting the history of permissions people have already relied upon.
The certification marks
The Foundation has filed five certification-mark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
All five were filed by and are owned by the FCL Standard Foundation. The Foundation was formed before the applications were filed. No assignment from an individual is pending or required.
| Mark | Serial No. | Filed | Status* |
|---|---|---|---|
| FCL | 99732430 | 30 March 2026 | Office action issued |
| FCL CANON | 99732478 | 30 March 2026 | Office action issued |
| FCL CONTROLLED | 99751765 | 8 April 2026 | Pending examination |
| FCL COMMONS | 99751799 | 8 April 2026 | Pending examination |
| HPL | 99748332 | 7 April 2026 | Office action issued |
*Status should be read as of the most recent update to this page. Current application status can be verified through USPTO TSDR.
All five applications were filed on an intent-to-use basis.
An application is not a registration. Registration is neither automatic nor guaranteed.
Draft certification rules have been published for comment, but the certification program is not yet operational.
Until applicable rules are adopted and authorization is issued, no party is authorized by the Foundation to use an FCL certification mark.
Certification marks are intended to be used by qualifying parties other than the owner of the marks.
The marks are intended to communicate verified conformity with published certification requirements. The Foundation's role is to administer their authorized use under objective, published rules.
Federal certification-mark law also places obligations on the certifier. A registered certification mark may be vulnerable to cancellation if its owner discriminatorily refuses certification to a party that maintains the standards or conditions being certified. That obligation appears in 15 U.S.C. §1064(5)(D).
For that reason, certification eligibility is intended to be governed by objective, published requirements.
Certification will not depend on Foundation membership, use of a preferred commercial vendor, or another undisclosed relationship.
Open standard, separate certification
Implementation of the FCL specifications and certification under the FCL program are separate things.
An organization may implement the open specification without becoming a member of the Foundation, purchasing a Foundation service, or using a preferred technology provider.
Certification carries additional requirements because certification communicates something to third parties.
That separation is intentional.
A standard intended to work across platforms cannot depend on one platform.
A registry standard cannot require one registry provider.
A payment-routing architecture cannot require one payment processor.
And a standards organization should not use certification to force adoption of a commercial product it or its insiders control.
Conforming self-hosted and third-party implementations should therefore be capable of qualifying for certification under the same substantive requirements as any other implementation.
Where authority remains
The Foundation defines and stewards the permission standards that allow different parties to communicate clearly with one another.
Ownership and decision-making remain with the people and organizations that hold the relevant rights.
Rights holders continue to control their intellectual property and decide what they wish to permit.
Creators retain responsibility for the works they make and the permissions they rely upon.
Performers and their authorized representatives remain responsible for decisions involving likeness, voice, performance, and consent.
Platforms and service providers continue to make their own decisions about moderation, compliance, disputes, and enforcement.
An FCL registry helps record and communicate permission claims, profile terms, and relevant authority. It is not intended to replace courts, contracts, title records, or other legal processes for resolving ownership disputes.
Likewise, use of the FCL framework does not narrow fair use, fair dealing, public-domain status, statutory exceptions, or other activity that is independently lawful.
Separate implementations may use FCL permission data to support compliance, verification, dispute handling, or enforcement workflows. The standard provides a common source of structured permission information; the resulting business and legal decisions remain with the parties whose rights or services are involved.
The proposed FCL-as-a-Service (FaaS) federation, if developed, would extend that infrastructure by helping systems resolve and communicate permission states across platforms and services.
The Foundation's role remains the same throughout: maintain the shared language and trust framework, while leaving ownership, permission choices, commercial decisions, and enforcement with the parties entitled to make them.
Competition and commercial independence
The Foundation standardizes interfaces, permission vocabulary, interoperability, and certification requirements.
Commercial decisions remain with market participants.
Rights holders determine the royalties and licensing terms they are prepared to offer.
Performers determine the compensation and conditions applicable to authorized uses of their identity, likeness, voice, or performance.
Creators determine the prices and commercial terms for the works they produce.
Operators establish their own market prices, service offerings, and competitive business models.
Current draft certification concepts contemplate economic-transparency requirements and may include conditions applicable to certified operators. Those requirements are separate from FCL-CORE and remain subject to review before adoption.
The purpose of those rules is to make important commercial terms visible and understandable, not to establish private market prices on behalf of participants.
The Foundation does not convene forums in which operators, platforms, rights holders, performers, creators, or other competitors coordinate private prices, rates, revenue splits, or other competitively sensitive commercial terms.
Foundation funding is designed to remain independent of transaction value.
The Foundation receives no automatic percentage of licensed revenue or operator transaction volume merely because the FCL standard is being used.
Contemplated funding sources include:
- certification and audit fees;
- grants;
- donations and sponsorships consistent with Foundation independence;
- educational or program fees; and
- other lawful sources of support that do not make Foundation revenue dependent on the value of individual licensed transactions.
That institutional separation is deliberate.
The Foundation's financial interest should be in maintaining a useful, trusted, and widely implementable standard — not in increasing the value of any particular license, transaction, platform, operator, or commercial arrangement.
The custodian of the standard should succeed when the standard works well, not simply when more money passes through systems that use it.
How the standard changes
A standards organization must be capable of changing its rules.
It must also preserve an accurate record of what the rules were at any given time.
FCL therefore separates the evolution of the standard from the permission state on which someone previously relied.
New specification versions apply prospectively.
A later version of the specification does not automatically rewrite an earlier permission profile or disturb a valid reliance relationship established under that profile.
Published specification versions remain publicly retrievable.
Version history is preserved.
The developing change process requires substantive changes to include:
publication of the proposed change;
an opportunity for public comment;
consideration of submitted comments;
publication of substantive comment dispositions; and
formal approval under Foundation governance procedures.
The seated board will establish and publish the default comment-period length, voting rules, and the threshold separating major from minor changes before those procedures are first used.
Certification-program rules are separately versioned.
Material certification changes should ordinarily operate prospectively and provide a reasonable transition period for existing certified participants.
Exceptions may be required where immediate action is necessary to address fraud, illegality, security vulnerabilities, or misuse of a certification mark.
Participation in the standard
The standard is intended to be developed in public rather than behind a membership wall.
Anyone may comment.
Anyone may submit a change proposal.
Future working groups are intended to operate under published rules governing:
participation;
intellectual-property contributions;
conflicts of interest;
antitrust compliance;
conduct;
decision-making;
public records; and
appeals or objections where applicable.
No stakeholder class — including rights holders, creators, performers, platforms, AI companies, registries, marketplaces, or operators — should have unilateral control over changes that materially affect the others.
That does not mean every participant receives a veto.
It means the process for changing shared infrastructure should be visible, documented, and resistant to capture.
Comments and proposals: info@fclstandard.org
Conflicts of interest
Potential conflicts are best handled through early disclosure and clear recusal rules.
The Foundation's founder, directors, advisers, contributors, or future working-group participants may also build, advise, work for, invest in, or hold financial interests in organizations that implement the FCL standards.
Participation in the commercial ecosystem is not itself disqualifying.
What matters is that those relationships are visible and handled under consistent conflict-of-interest rules.
A director or decision-maker with a financial or organizational interest in an applicant, operator, registry, verifier, platform, vendor, or other entity directly affected by a Foundation decision must disclose that interest.
Where the conflict is material, that person should be recused from any Foundation decision in which the conflict could reasonably affect impartial judgment.
Certification standards should apply equally to implementations associated with Foundation insiders and implementations built by unrelated third parties.
Affiliated implementations should be evaluated under the same published requirements, audit expectations, appeal procedures, and certification criteria as any other participant.
No participant should receive privileged access to unpublished requirements or another advantage unavailable under the published rules.
The goal is not to separate the Foundation from the ecosystem around it.
The goal is to make participation compatible with impartial stewardship.
The credibility of the standard depends on decisions being made under rules that are visible, consistent, and equally applicable to everyone.
What exists today
As of this page's current version:
The FCL Standard Foundation exists as a West Virginia nonprofit corporation.
The FCL family of draft specifications exists and is publicly available.
The certification-mark applications exist and are pending before the USPTO.
The draft certification framework exists and is open to review.
The RSL interoperability binding exists.
The standards are available for scrutiny and implementation.
What is still being built
The Foundation is still in its early institutional stage, and several parts of the proposed ecosystem remain to be built, tested, or formally adopted.
Among the structures still being developed, tested, or formally adopted are:
an independent multi-member board;
federal tax-exempt status;
formal standards working groups;
a final certification program;
production certification audits;
an operational federated registry ecosystem;
a production FaaS network;
large-scale platform integrations; and
mature dispute and appeals infrastructure.
Some of those systems may change substantially before launch.
Some may ultimately be implemented by independent organizations within the FCL ecosystem rather than operated directly by the Foundation.
And some proposals may be abandoned if scrutiny produces a better answer.
That is what the draft process is for.
Questions still under development
Publishing the draft standards also exposes questions that implementation, legal review, interoperability work, and outside scrutiny still need to answer.
That is intentional.
FCL is being published before every part of the architecture is settled so that those questions can be examined while the system is still capable of changing easily.
Areas still under development include governance design, authority verification, registry federation, certification economics, interoperability, reliance mechanisms, platform integration, international operation, dispute processes, and the practical behavior of the standards under real implementation.
Some of those questions may be resolved through technical work.
Others will require legal analysis, pilot programs, platform feedback, creator participation, or experience from organizations that attempt to implement the standards.
The Foundation expects some of the current answers to change as the standards are tested in practice.
The purpose of publishing early is to make the assumptions visible, invite challenge, and improve the framework before widespread reliance develops around it.
That means criticism is useful.
Unexpected edge cases are useful.
Competing implementation ideas are useful.
And evidence that part of the architecture should work differently is useful.
The objective is not to defend the first draft.
It is to develop a standard that can earn confidence through scrutiny, implementation, and revision.
The questions are better answered openly, before widespread reliance, with the participation of the people who will ultimately have to use the answers.
The principle
The FCL Standard Foundation exists to maintain the shared rules that allow a permission economy to function without requiring everyone in it to trust the same company.
Rights holders keep their rights.
Creators keep their work.
Performers keep authority over their own consent.
Platforms choose whether and how to implement the standard.
Independent companies may build competing services around it.
And the Foundation maintains the common language, certification framework, and change process that let those separate parties work together.
The standard should be strong enough to be relied upon — and the institution holding it should be constrained enough to be trusted.