Please refer to the included Brand & Trademark Usage Guide to ensure that you follow our brand and trademark policies. If you have questions, concerns, or comments, please send an email to legal@resf.org.
This is a statement of Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation's (RESF) trademarks and its policy and guidelines relating to use of trademarks owned by RESF and used by projects under RESF.
For purposes of this document, references to trademarks or marks include all trade and service marks and logos owned by the RESF legal entity. Projects operating as separately incorporated entities managed by RESF have their own trademarks, policies and usage guidelines.
Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation has registrations pending or trademarks in use for the following marks in the United States and/or other countries:
- Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation™
- RESF™
- Rocky Linux™
Trademarks are used to provide assurance to the community of consistency with respect to the quality of products or services with which the mark is associated. This policy attempts to strike the proper balance between two competing interests: 1) the need of the RESF to ensure that its trademarks remain reliable indicators of the qualities that they have been created to preserve and 2) the need of RESF to ensure that community members are able to discuss the projects with which RESF is associated and to accurately describe the relationship between RESF and the products and services offered by others.
A trademark provides the owner with an exclusive right to authorize or control the use of the mark. Your right to use a mark of RESF is provided for in this policy and in the statement of permitted use, if any, that may accompany the trademark notice displayed on the website dedicated to the project. A copyright license, even an open source copyright license, does not include an implied right or license to use a trademark that may be related to the project developing the licensed software or other materials. Because open source licenses permit unrestricted modification of the copyrighted software, and RESF has no intention of interfering with that right, your right to use any specific trademark of RESF is not determined by your use of software made available under an open source license. Your right to use a mark is conditioned upon conforming to other requirements that are directly related to the qualities that the specific mark has been created to preserve.
Proper use of RESF trademarks by following these trademark guidelines protects the value of RESF trademarks. Any use of or reference to RESF trademarks that is inconsistent with this trademark policy, or use of marks that are confusingly similar to trademarks of RESF, is prohibited. All uses of RESF trademarks, and all goodwill associated therewith, will inure solely to the benefit of RESF.
There are some basic rules that apply to any use of any trade or service mark that you do not own, including any mark of RESF, without the express permission of the owner.
- A trademark should never be used as a verb or a noun. A trademark should be used only as an adjective followed by the generic name/noun.
- A trademark should not be used in the plural or possessive form.
- A trademark should not be altered or amended in any way. A mark should not be combined with any other mark, hyphenated, abbreviated or displayed in parts. A trademark that is depicted as two or more words should not be compressed into one word. A logo should not be displayed with color variations, or with other elements superimposed on top of the logo.
- A trademark should not be used as your domain name or as part of your domain name.
- A trademark should not be incorporated into your company’s logos or designs.
- A trademark notice should be used on the most prominent and/or first appearance of each mark of RESF, and a trademark notice should not be changed. In particular, a ™ should not be changed to a ® in a trademark notice by anyone other than the owner. Alternatively, or as a supplement to the ®, ™, or common law notices, a footnote or text notice with one of the alternative statutory notices is good practice: “X is a trademark of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation.” If you are unsure about whether a mark of RESF is registered in your country, please contact us for additional guidance as to what trademark symbol you should use.
There are also some basic rights that everyone has to use any trademark, which are often referred to as "fair use," and RESF does not intend to restrict those rights. You may make fair use of word marks to make true factual statements. But fair use does not permit you to state or imply that the owner of a mark products, endorses, or supports your company, products, or services. Even when making fair use of a trademark, you should acknowledge the owner of the trademark with a trademark notice, such as the notice displayed on RESF project websites.
In addition to the generally applicable rules discussed above, there are a few specific rules that we ask everyone to follow when using trademarks owned by RESF.
- Use the full form of any trademark (e.g., “Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation”) in the first reference in all documents of mass communication, including marketing collateral and web pages. You may then use any abbreviated or short form references (e.g. “RESF”) within the same document where the full form has already been used.
- Use RESF’s trademarks in a form that distinguishes them from the text around them, such as by capitalization, bold or italic fonts, or with quotation marks. Any use of unregistered trademarks as listed in the Trademark List above should include a ™ immediately after the first usage (e.g., “The Rocky Linux™ community seeks to secure…”)
- Do not use RESF trademarks in a manner that would disparage RESF or its projects (e.g., untruthful advertising, false/misleading promotional materials, etc.).
- Do not use a RESF logo on the cover of a book or magazine without written permission from RESF.
- Do not use a logo of RESF on posters, brochures, signs, websites, or other marketing materials to promote your events, products or services without written permission from RESF.
- Do not refer to a product or service as being certified under any of RESF’s marks unless your company has successfully undergone the requisite compliance testing and has explicit authorization to use such terms from RESF.
- Do not attempt to claim or assert any ownership rights in any mark of RESF and do not attempt to register any RESF trademark as a trademark, trade name, domain name, or “doing business as” name, alone or (unless specifically licensed) in combination with your own trademarks.
- Do not use any RESF trademark in metatags, search fields, hidden text, or any other form that has the purpose or effect of diverting or confusing consumers without RESF’s prior written permission.
- Do not adopt marks or logos that are confusingly similar to any RESF trademarks.
- Do not use RESF trademarks for products or services for which they were not originally intended.
- Do not alter a RESF trademark in any way.
RESF marks have been created and their use is expressly permitted for a specific purpose. Do not use logos or names of RESF in any commercial or marketing context other than as expressly permitted in this policy unless you have obtained explicit written permission from RESF to do so. RESF permits the use of its trademarks for private and personal use to make t-shirts, stickers, and caps for yourself and your friends (meaning people from whom you don't receive anything of value in return) in a manner that is consistent with the preservation of the goodwill and value of the mark. The goodwill, if any, derived from your use of any RESF trademarks exclusively inures to the benefit of and belongs to the RESF.
You are also allowed to use a trademark or logo of RESF as a link to the home page of the applicable project or to a web page on the RESF web site that is relevant to the reference so long as the link is in a manner that is consistent with the preservation of the goodwill and value of the mark. The link and all other usage of a logo of RESF shall be done using the official versions of RESF logos obtained from RESF or its projects.
For examples of incorrect uses of a logo of RESF, please refer to Section 1.3 (Logo Misuse) of our Brand & Trademark Usage Guide (included in our Brand Kit).
Certain marks of RESF have been created to enable you to communicate compatibility or interoperability of software or products. In addition to the requirement that any use of a mark to make an assertion of compatibility must, of course, be accurate, the use of these marks must avoid confusion regarding RESF's association with the product. The use of the mark cannot imply that RESF or its projects are sponsoring or endorsing the product. The following are examples of proper and improper usage of these trademarks of RESF:
Correct: <your product name> for <RESF mark>
Correct: <your product/company name> plug-in for <RESF mark>
Correct: <your product name> compatible with <RESF mark>
Correct: <your product name> for use with <RESF mark>
Correct: Quick Start for <RESF mark> by <your company name>
Correct: <non-trademarked industry term> Day featuring <RESF mark>
Correct: <non-trademarked industry term> Day with <RESF mark>
Correct: <non-trademarked industry term> Day including <RESF mark>
Incorrect: <RESF mark> <your product name>
Incorrect: <RESF mark> by <your company name>
Incorrect: <RESF mark> - <your product name>
Incorrect: <your product/company name> - <RESF mark>
Incorrect: <RESF mark> Quick Start by <your company name>
Incorrect: <RESF mark> Day
Incorrect: <RESF mark> Day by <your company name>
Incorrect: <non-trademarked industry term> Day brought to you by <RESF mark>
We look to our community to help us retain the value of RESF's trade and service marks. If you have questions with respect to these guidelines or to report concerns regarding the use or misuse of a trademark of RESF, or to obtain written permission for a proposed use of RESF trademarks, contact: legal@resf.org.
RESF does not make any express or implied warranties, including but not limited to the warranties of non-infringement of any third party intellectual property rights. RESF does not warrant that any pending trademark applications for trademarks of RESF will result in any granted trademark protection. RESF shall not be liable for any claims relating to user's activities falling within the scope of the permission and user hereby agrees to indemnify, defend and hold RESF and its contributors harmless against any such claim.
RESF may release new versions of RESF trademark policy or statements of permitted use of RESF marks without notice.
This work is inspired by the Mozilla Foundation Trademark Policy and the GNOME Trademark Licensing. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license ("CC-BY-4.0", available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).