[media-types] [IANA #1451778] Inquiry on Standards Tree Registration for application/mwf

Dear Mr. Muramatsu (moving [email protected] to bcc),

Thank you for contacting us.

To qualify for standards-tree media type registration, one of the following must be true of the media type, according to Section 3.1 of RFC 6838:

1a) It's documented in and registered by an RFC produced within the IETF.
1b) It's documented in and registered by an "independent submission" RFC. In this case, the type itself would also have to be approved by the IESG, the IETF's steering group. (We can submit that request to the IESG when the time comes). This approach requires that the RFC Independent Stream Editor be willing to publish the document.

2) It's being requested by a standards organization recognized by the IESG (a list of SDOs that have been allowed to request standards tree registrations is available at https://www.iana.org/assignments/iesg-recognized-organizations), then approved via the usual registration process by IESG-designated media type experts. If this is the appropriate path, we would submit the organization approval request to the IESG and then, if they approve, ask the IESG-designated experts to approve the registration itself. However, we would first need to confirm that the SDO has authorized the request, and the form would have to be updated to name them. They're typically added (ideally with an email address) to the change controller field.

3) The IESG-designated media type experts are willing to recommend that the IESG approve the media type as a grandfathered registration. If this is the only path available, we would ask the experts to review the request and, if they approve, pass it on to the IESG. In order to make a recommendation, the experts would want to see evidence of wide use and documentation. If the experts are unwilling to recommend grandfathering, an alternative would be to use the vendor tree instead of the standards tree, and use the name "type/vnd.subtype" instead, which could later be obsoleted by a standards-tree media type, if appropriate.

I believe that path 2) would apply here. You can submit a registration form for "application/mwf" at the form below and note the existing "application/vnd.MFER" in the "Deprecated alias" field (if deprecation is intended):

https://www.iana.org/form/media-types

Please note that we will ask that a copy of the specification(s) be provided to the IESG-designated media type expert during the expert review process as well, after the approval of the SDO (the specific ISO TC in this case) by the IESG.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,

David Dong
IANA Services Sr. Specialist

On Fri May 08 06:22:02 2026, [email protected] wrote:
> Dear IANA Media Types Team,
> 
> My name is Kazuhiko Muramatsu, and I am a technical engineer at Nihon
> Kohden Corporation,
> a company that manufactures medical devices.
> 
> In addition to my work at the company, I am also involved in
> activities at JAHIS (Japan Association of Healthcare Information
> Systems Industry),
> where we work on the standardization of physiological function testing
> data exchange between physiological function testing systems.
> 
> I am writing to seek your advice regarding the procedure for
> registering a media type in the Standards Tree.
> 
> Specifically, this inquiry concerns the media type
> "application/vnd.MFER", which was registered as a MIME media type by
> the MFER Committee in 2006.
> After confirming the circumstances of the registration with Mr. Hirai,
> who submitted the original request,
> we found that the MFER specification was still in the process of ISO
> standardization at that time.
> For this reason, the media type was registered under the Vendor Tree.
> 
> https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/vnd.MFER
> 
> From the beginning, there was an intention to register the media type
> under the name "mwf".
> Since the MFER specification has now been standardized as an ISO
> standard(ISO 22077-1:2022 Health informatics - Medical waveform format
> Part 1: Encoding rules),
> we are planning to apply for registration of the media type
> "application/mwf" in the Standards Tree.
> In addition to the current IS 22077-1 standard, the MFER standard also
> includes IS 22077-2 for 12-lead electrocardiography,
> IS 22077-2 for long-term electrocardiography, TS 22077-4 for exercise
> electrocardiography, and TS 22077-5 for neurophysiological signals.
> 
> However, as "application/vnd.MFER" is currently registered in the
> Vendor Tree, we would appreciate your guidance on the appropriate way
> to proceed with the registration of "application/mwf" in the Standards
> Tree,
> taking the existing registration into account.
> 
> Thank you very much for your time and assistance. We look forward to
> your kind advice.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Kazuhiko Muramatsu
> Nihon Kohden Corporation
> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

_______________________________________________
media-types mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]