Trademark Policy: Review and Survey

Take the Trademark Policy Survey

For some time there has been an acknowledged need, both within the Foundation and amongst Rust users, to update the Rust Foundation trademark policy to ensure that it is fit for purpose. 

Trademark law is primarily about protecting the public, rather than the holder of the trademark. Trademarks represent a specific product or service, and the values and qualities associated with it. This means that the use of trademarks that confuse people - in our case the community of maintainers, developers and wider users of the Rust programming language - is not legally permitted. The Rust Foundation, as the steward of the Rust and Cargo trademarks, must ensure that the marks are used properly, so that the community is not confused or encouraged to use a different or inferior product to what they expect. When the trademark no longer represents a trusted level of quality to the community, the trademark loses its value.

The Rust and Cargo names and brands make it possible to say what is officially part of the Rust community, and what isn’t. So we need to be careful about where we allow them to appear. But at the same time, we want to allow for as much creative use of these brands as we can - this is open source after all. 

Therefore, we would like your help to inform us how we should strike the right balance as we review and redraft the trademark policy.

Our survey should only take around 5 minutes to complete, and will enable us to better understand what you, the community, want from the trademark policy. 

Once we have your answers, a group of Project members, Foundation staff and legal counsel will meet to review the results, discuss key principles and ways forward, and provide guidance on what should be in our revised policy. Our legal counsel will then produce a final policy, which we hope will be in place by year end. 

The survey will be open until 2nd September 2022.

TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

We appreciate your support!