GOVERNANCE

Who holds this, and what stops them.

The custodian, the license, the marks, the change process — and a clear account of what exists, what is proposed, and what is not settled yet.

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 custodian

The FCL Standard Foundation exists to serve as the nonprofit custodian of the FCL family of standards: to develop, administer, and promote open, programmable licensing standards, interoperability rules, and certification marks.

Current status, stated plainly: 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, it identifies them as proposed or not yet operational.

The specification

FCL-CORE-0.1.2 is published under CC BY 4.0. Implementation 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 specification is a draft published for comment. It has no known implementations.

Known unresolved questions are listed in the specification itself rather than left to be discovered after implementation.

Companion drafts define related parts of the architecture:

FCL-RSL-BINDING-0.1 addresses interoperability with Really Simple Licensing.

FCL-REGISTRY-MARK-0.1 defines the proposed registry and certification-mark model.

FCL-CERTIFICATION-RULES-0.1 defines proposed eligibility, audit, economic-transparency, suspension, and appeals rules for certification.

Publication of a draft does not mean that the corresponding infrastructure or certification program is operational.

The certification marks

Five certification-mark applications are pending 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.

*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 the applicable rules are adopted and authorization is issued, no party is authorized by the Foundation to use an FCL certification mark.

Certification marks are designed to be used by parties other than the owner of the mark on goods or services meeting the applicable certification requirements. The Foundation's role is to control authorized use of the marks according to published standards, not to apply them to goods or services it itself certifies.

A registered certification mark may also be vulnerable to cancellation if its owner discriminately refuses certification to a party that maintains the standards or conditions being certified. That obligation appears in 15 U.S.C. §1064(5)(D).

Accordingly, certification eligibility will be governed by objective, published criteria and will not depend on Foundation membership, use of a favored vendor, or another undisclosed commercial relationship.

What the Foundation does not do

The Foundation defines and stewards permission standards.

It does not own, administer, license, or enforce anyone else's intellectual property, likeness, performance rights, or creative works.

It does not negotiate licenses on behalf of rights holders or creators.

It does not decide whether a rights holder should pursue a claim or whether a platform should remove a work.

Separate implementations may use FCL permission data in compliance, verification, dispute, or enforcement workflows. Those decisions remain with the rights holders, platforms, creators, and other parties whose rights or services are involved.

The proposed FCL-as-a-Service federation, if developed, would provide infrastructure for resolving and communicating permission states. It would not make the Foundation the enforcement agent for participating rights holders.

Competition and commercial terms

The Foundation standardizes interfaces and certification conditions.

Market participants set prices.

The Foundation does not set a rights holder's royalty, a performer's compensation, a creator's selling price, or an operator's market price.

Participants determine those terms independently.

The draft certification rules currently propose a maximum routing fee of five percent of gross licensed revenue for a Certified Routing Operator. That ceiling is a condition for certification, not a required price. An operator may charge less, charge nothing, or choose not to seek certification.

The proposed certification rules also contain a reference economic configuration in which the creator's remainder is the largest single discretionary share. Profiles that depart from that configuration may remain technically expressible under FCL-CORE but must disclose the departure if they participate in the certification program.

These are certification conditions and transparency rules, not negotiated market rates.

The Foundation convenes no forum for operators, platforms, rights holders, performers, or creators to coordinate their private prices, rates, splits, or other competitively sensitive commercial terms.

The Foundation does not receive a percentage of licensed revenue or a percentage of an operator's routing fee.

Its contemplated funding sources include disclosed certification and audit fees, grants, donations or other lawful support, and program fees established independently of transaction value.

The institutional incentive is deliberate: the custodian of the standard should not make more money merely because more licensing revenue passes through systems using the standard.

Change process

The standard must be able to change without rewriting history.

New specification versions apply prospectively.

A later specification version does not rewrite the terms of an earlier permission profile or disturb a valid reliance envelope established under that profile.

Every published specification version is retained and remains publicly retrievable.

Version history is immutable.

Substantive changes to the standard require:

• publication of the proposed change;

• a public-comment period;

• consideration of submitted comments;

• publication of substantive comment dispositions; and

• approval by the supermajority required under Foundation governance.

The seated board will establish and publish the default comment-period length and the threshold separating major from minor changes before those procedures are first used.

Certification-program rules are separately versioned.

Material certification-rule changes should operate prospectively and include a reasonable transition period for existing certified participants, except where immediate action is necessary to address fraud, security, illegality, or misuse of a certification mark.

Participation

Comment is open to anyone.

Change proposals may be submitted by anyone.

Working-group participation will be open under published participation, intellectual-property, conflict-of-interest, and conduct rules before the first working group convenes.

No stakeholder class — including rights holders, creators, performers, platforms, AI companies, registries, or operators — should have unilateral control over changes that materially affect the others.

Comments and proposals: info@fclstandard.org

Conflicts of interest

Disclosed upfront rather than discovered later:

The Foundation's founder or another director may in the future build, advise, work for, or hold a financial interest in an implementation of the FCL standards.

That possibility does not disqualify such an implementation from participating in the ecosystem, but it creates a conflict that must be handled visibly.

If a director has an interest in an applicant, operator, registry, verifier, or other entity affected by a Foundation certification decision, that interest must be disclosed and the director