I. Non-lawyers

The Request for Proposals (RFP) for the IANA contract has been reissued, with no substantive changes to the meat of the requirements of the IANA function, but plenty of additional contractual clauses added to govern the organization that performs the function.

The key changes at a glance:

• Most obvious: date changes for the submission deadline (now 31 May 2012) and for the new IANA contract dates (now 1 Oct 2012 - 30 Sep 2015).
• Most amusing: the Department of Commerce has, since the November RFP, decided that toxic chemical spills are an unlikely by-product of the IANA function and has removed the relevant contract clause (If you're interested, IANA contractors now don't have to worry about 52.223-13 Certification Of Toxic Chemical Release Reporting (Aug 2003)).
• Most intriguing: the US Government's rights to IANA deliverables are reinforced in multiple ways, from Section F.5, "Government Rights to Deliverables" to Sections H.3, "Patent Rights—Ownership by the Government" and H.5, "Rights in Data—Existing Works".
• Most likely to put non-lawyers to sleep: 21 new contract clauses are listed in Section I. Non-lawyers who don't fall asleep, however, will be rewarded by the idiosyncratic inclusion of Section I.24, "52.223-18 Encouraging Contractor Policies To Ban Text Messaging While Driving (Aug 2011)".