@caschramm I am sorry that this is going to sound a little picky, but given the context I think it’s important to make a distinction. I am suggesting that we follow the naming convention of the IMGT ontology. IMGT V-quest or other IMGT systems report their findings in terms of the ontology. Perhaps they also use the terms internally, as database labels, we don’t really know. But we are not aiming to copy their database or its labels, we would just be following the ontology.
I think it’s relevant that "The WHO-IUIS Nomenclature SubCommittee for Immunoglobulins and T cell receptors follows the rules for the nomenclatures, as described in the IMGT Scientific chart, http://imgt.cines.fr[1]. These rules are based on the concepts of IMGT-ONTOLOGY [2] and [3], the first ontology in immunogenetics and immunoinformatics. " (ref) . In other words, the naming and definition of terms in the IMGT Ontology has been adopted as a world standard.
From Wikipedia (sorry) “In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of discourse”
From these points of view it seems clear to me personally that the ontology falls in the category of ‘gene names and gene naming systematics’ as discussed just now by @bussec - but I think the way to resolve the copyright issue definitively would be through discussion with the WHO-IUIS Nomenclature SubCommittee. But I don’t see how the use of a WHO standard name could break copyright.