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Trademark Usage Guidelines

Updated May 10, 2024

LF Charities, Inc. (“LFC”) is an organization devoted to empowering people and communities to engage in the creation and development of open source technology (e.g., open source software, hardware and data) that is freely shared with the world to help overcome societal challenges and inequalities. It is the mission, duty and purpose of LFC to educate, inspire, and empower technologists and their communities in their endeavor to create a shared, public commons for open source technology that advances interests for society at large.

This is a statement of LFC’s trademarks and its policy and guidelines relating to use of trademarks owned by LFC and used by projects under LFC. Individual projects under LFC may have additional guidelines and requirements for the use of trademarks intended to imply compliance with certain criteria or other requirements, and in such cases compliance with such criteria and requirements is necessary.

For purposes of this document, references to trademarks or marks include all trade and service marks and logos owned by LFC. 

The Linux® Trademark

For information regarding the Linux trademark, owned by Linus Torvalds, please see: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/the-linux-mark.

LFC’s Trademarks

LFC’s registered trademarks, pending applications and common law trademarks are listed below with the proper trademark symbol for each trademark:

  • LF Charities™
  • Jenkins®
  • The Jenkins logo ®
  • Tazama™

LFC Trademark Usage Guidelines

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 LFC to ensure that its trademarks remain reliable indicators of the qualities that they have been created to preserve and 2) the need of LFC to ensure that community members are able to discuss the projects with which LFC is associated and to accurately describe the relationship between LFC 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 LFC 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 LFC has no intention of interfering with that right, your right to use any specific trademark of LFC 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 LFC trademarks by following these trademark usage guidelines protects the value of LFC trademarks. Any use of or reference to LFC trademarks that is inconsistent with this trademark policy, or use of marks that are confusingly similar to trademarks of LFC, is prohibited. All uses of LFC trademarks, and all goodwill associated therewith, will inure solely to the benefit of LFC.

Rules that Apply to Trademarks in General

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 LFC, without the express permission of the owner.

  • A trademark should never be used as a verb or 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 used as part of your product 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 LFC, and a trademark notice should not be changed. In particular, a ™ should not be changed to an ® in a trademark notice by anyone other than the owner. If you are unsure about whether a mark of LFC 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 LFC 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 produces, 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 LFC project websites.

Rules and Policies Applicable to Marks Owned by LFC

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 LFC.

  • Use the full form of any trademarks (e.g., “LF Charities, Inc.”) 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., “LFC”) within the same the document where the full form has already been used.
  • Use LFC’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 registered trademarks as indicated in LFC’s Trademark List above should include the ® symbol immediately after the first usage (e.g., “The Jenkins® project announces….”). Any use of unregistered trademarks as listed in the Trademark List should include a TM immediately after the first usage (e.g., “LF Charities™ announces….”)
  • Only use LFC trademarks truthfully and in a manner not likely to be deceptive (e.g., untruthful advertising, false/misleading promotional materials, implied endorsements, etc.).
  • Do not use a LFC logo on the cover of a book or magazine without written permission from LFC.
  • Do not use LFC trademarks more prominently than your own company, product or service name.
  • Do not use a logo of LFC on posters, brochures, signs, websites, or other marketing materials to promote your events, products or services without written permission from LFC.
  • Do not refer to a product or service as being certified under any of LFC’s marks unless your company has successfully undergone the requisite compliance testing and has explicit authorization to use such terms from LFC.
  • Do not attempt to claim or assert any ownership rights in any mark of LFC and do not attempt to register any LFC trademark as a trademark, trade name, domain name, or “doing business as” name, alone or (unless specifically licensed) in combination with your own trademarks.

LFC marks have been created and their use is expressly permitted for a specific purpose. Do not use logos or names of LFC in any commercial or marketing context other than as expressly permitted in this policy unless you have obtained explicit written permission from LFC to do so. LFC permits the use of its trademarks for non-commercial, private and personal use to make t-shirts, stickers, and caps for yourself and your friends (meaning people from whom you do not receive anything of value in return) in a manner that is consistent with the preservation of the goodwill and value of the applicable mark.

You are also allowed to use a trademark or logo of LFC as a link to the home page of the applicable project or to a web page on LFC 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 LFC shall be done using the official versions of LFC logos obtained from LFC or its projects and you must comply with any visual guidelines or additional requirements for each logo. 

Certain marks of LFC may be 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 LFC’s association with the product. The use of the mark cannot imply that LFC or its projects are sponsoring, supporting, or endorsing the product. The following are examples of proper and improper usage of these trademarks of LFC:

Proper:

  • Correct: <your product name> for <LFC mark>
  • Correct: <your product/company name> plug-in for <LFC mark>
  • Correct: <your product name> compatible with <LFC mark>
  • Correct: <your product name> for use with <LFC mark>
  • Correct: Quick Start for <LFC mark> by <your company name>
  • Correct: <non-trademarked industry term> Day featuring <LFC mark>
  • Correct: <non-trademarked industry term> Day with <LFC mark>
  • Correct: <non-trademarked industry term> Day including <LFC mark>

Improper/Incorrect:

  • Incorrect: <LFC mark> <your product name>
  • Incorrect: <LFC mark> by <your company name>
  • Incorrect: <LFC mark> – <your product name>
  • Incorrect: <your product/company name> – <LFC mark>
  • Incorrect: <LFC mark> Quick Start by <your company name>
  • Incorrect: <LFC mark> Day
  • Incorrect: <LFC mark> Day by <your company name>
  • Incorrect: <non-trademarked industry term> Day brought to you by <LFC mark>

Questions, Comments, Concerns

We look to our community to help us retain the value of LFC’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 LFC, or to obtain written permission for a proposed use of LFC trademarks, contact: trademarks@lfcharities.dev.

Disclaimer

LFC 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. LFC does not warrant that any pending trademark applications for trademarks of LFC will result in any granted trademark protection. LFC shall not be liable for any claims relating to your use of trademarks of LFC.

Updates

LFC may release new versions of LFC trademark policy or statements of permitted use of LFC 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).

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