Internal note for Caroline — remove before sharing with external contacts if not relevant
Violet Shores · VAC
Standards & intellectual-property visibility — a note for your read
Two competent people, verified live — at the moment of the decision.
VAC proves each is competent (authority), genuinely present (live biometric), and that both were there (immutable audit). A two-person control built on logins can prove none of that.
The standards question, in plain terms
You're seeing the working demo. Separately, there's a decision I'd value your judgment on — it's as much an intellectual-property and commercial call as a technical one, and you'll have far better context now that you've seen what the product actually does.
The short version. The idea at the heart of VAC — proving which real, accountable person stands behind an AI system's actions — lines up with an active effort by the global body that writes the internet's technical rulebooks to create a shared standard for recording what AI agents do. That effort has an obvious gap that our idea fills. Being the party who helps shape how that gap gets filled is valuable. But putting our approach out publicly too early — before we've signed customers — could also hand a roadmap to much larger competitors.
A few plain-language definitions
- IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)
- The open, global body that writes the internet's core technical standards — the agreed rules that let different companies' systems work together. Membership is free and open to anyone.
- Standard
- An agreed technical specification. Following a recognised standard is how a company shows its product "plays by the rules" and works with everyone else's.
- Draft (Internet-Draft)
- An early proposal document submitted to the IETF. It has no official status on its own and expires after six months — it's a starting point for discussion, not a finished standard.
- Working Group
- The committee inside the IETF that, if it adopts a draft, shepherds it over several years toward becoming a finished, published standard.
- IPR disclosure
- An IETF rule requiring anyone contributing to declare relevant patents or patent applications they hold, along with the terms on which they'd license them.
Where things stand today
Two provisional patent applications are filed (references AU 2026906147 and AU 2026906148), covering how the technology works. Two IETF draft documents describing the outward interface — deliberately not the inner workings — are written but not yet submitted. My working recommendation is to stage: establish a light presence in the standards conversation now, but hold formal publication until we have a committed customer and your sign-off on the IP position. This demo is the trigger for both.
What I'd value your read on — happy to walk through on a call
Question 1 · IP position
The licensing statement for an eventual IETF submission.
The IETF requires us to disclose relevant patent applications and say how we'd license them. We'd want a statement that keeps the interface free-to-use and open (which drives adoption and suits the Foundation), while the underlying mechanism patents stay separately licensable (Violet Shores revenue). Does that split hold up, and how should the statement read?
Question 2 · timing
Publish into the standard now, or wait until we've a customer?
Your read on the trade-off: shaping the field early versus accelerating better-resourced competitors before we have protection beyond a provisional filing.
Question 3 · a short message to the group
Are you comfortable with me sending a brief question into the standards discussion?
No specification and no drafts — simply raising a design question. Because even that counts as a formal "contribution" under the IETF's rules, I wanted your awareness before it goes out.
Question 4 · patent conversion
Timing the provisional-to-full patent conversions (due Feb/Mar 2027) against any publication.
Which claims to convert and broaden, and whether that should happen before we go public.
Relevant to your world
This isn't only an EU idea. Australia's own AI guidance (AI Adoption / "AI6", Practice 3) requires meaningful human oversight for high-stakes decisions — "rubber-stamping is not oversight" — and since June 2026 government bodies must name an accountable human for every AI use (tribunals are public bodies). The EU AI Act legislates it directly — Article 14 (human oversight, two-person verification) and Article 12 (record-keeping) — for high-risk systems from 2 December 2027. New Zealand and the Five Eyes agencies point the same way. VAC is built to evidence exactly this.
AU · AI6 human oversightAU gov · accountable owner (binding)EU Art 14 · two-personEU Art 12 · records