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# Trademark Use

# DUCKDB™ Trademark Use Guidelines

The DuckDB trademarks, service marks, and graphics marks are held by the Dutch Stichting DuckDB Foundation (“hereinafter: the DuckDB Foundation”). The DuckDB Foundation is a nonprofit organisation, and as such, needs to take special care about how its trademarks are used by others. In particular, the DuckDB Foundation needs to ensure that its software products are clearly distinguished from third-party products.

If you would like to provide software, services, events, or other products based on DuckDB, please refer to these DuckDB trademark use guidelines and when in doubt, just contact us for clarification.

## Rationale

The DuckDB trademarks, service marks, and graphics marks are symbols of the quality and community support that people have come to associate with the DuckDB project. To ensure that the use of DuckDB marks does not lead to confusion about our software, we must control their use in association with software and related services by others. As the non-profit guardian of the DuckDB and the holder of these rights, we have a legal mission, responsibility and the authority to set policy for the use of our marks.

The DuckDB Foundation and our software must be clearly distinguishable from any software that competes with DuckDB software, and from software or services by any company or individual that is not licensed by the DuckDB Foundation.

DuckDB Foundation trademarks must not be used to disparage the DuckDB software, our projects, members, sponsors, or community, nor be used in any way to imply ownership, endorsement, or sponsorship of any DuckDB-related project or initiative of any kind. We are a vendor-neutral organisation.

## Avoid confusion

Software products using, competing with or intended to be associated (whether technically or in people’s minds) with the DuckDB software, whether commercial or open source, are not allowed to use “Duck” in their name, except in the form “powered by DuckDB” or “for (use with) DuckDB” when following these specific guidelines. Names derived from “Duck”, such as “duckling”, are also not allowed. Company names may not include “Duck”, unless otherwise agreed in writing.

Package identifiers may include “duck”, but the full name used for the software package should follow the naming policy above.

Written materials must refer to the project as “DuckDB” in the first and most prominent mentions. Materials from software vendors or software-related service providers must follow stricter guidelines, including using the full project name “DuckDB” in more locations, and proper trademark attribution on every page.

Logos using the duck graphical and/or textual element, or otherwise derived from the DuckDB logos are also not allowed.

Domain names relating to products or services containing “duck” are not permitted without written permission from the DuckDB Foundation. Events, books, and merchandise have their own guidelines. Please contact us for details.

## Questions? Contact us

The DuckDB Foundation may grant permission to apply DuckDB trademarks (including graphic logos) for merchandise that promotes the DuckDB project, software or community. Permission to apply DuckDB trademarks will ordinarily be denied for merchandise that disparages DuckDB software or projects or that would serve to detract from the value of DuckDB software. As a rule of thumb you may assume the following uses of DuckDB trademarks are probably infringing: 1) Confusingly similar software product names; 2) Software service offerings that are for anything other than official DuckDB software; and 3) Company names that may be associated in customer's minds with the DuckDB project, software or community.

We appreciate the community’s help in respecting these guidelines. If you have any questions about the DuckDB trademark guidelines or policy, or if you wish to request permission for any specific use case, please email us quack@duckdb.org.