freepdfeditor/TRADEMARK.md

Trademark policy

The project name "FreePDFEditor", the wordmark, and the logo are not covered by the GPL-3.0-or-later license that applies to the source code. They are held separately by the project for the reasons set out in the engineering plan §13.4.

Why

The GPL guarantees the freedom to fork, modify, and redistribute the code. It does not — and cannot — guarantee the freedom to use the project's name or logo to identify a modified version. Holding the trademark separately lets the project:

• prevent forks from shipping malware or spyware under the FreePDFEditor name;
• prevent confusion about which build is the project's official release;
• allow legitimate community distributions (e.g. Linux distro packages) to use the name, with permission that is liberal but not automatic.

Policy

1. Official builds distributed from gitea.lm.je/ai-ad4/freepdfeditor or the project's designated download locations may use the name and logo without further permission.
2. Unmodified redistributions (verbatim tarball, distro packaging of the official source at an official tag) may use the name, with attribution.
3. Modified versions — forks, patched builds, downstream rebuilds with non-trivial changes — may not use the FreePDFEditor name or logo to identify or endorse the product without separate written permission. Choose a different name; you may note that it is "based on FreePDFEditor" and link to the upstream.
4. The logo is not free for generic use. It identifies this project's builds specifically.

Trademark vs. license

This policy does not restrict the rights granted by GPL-3.0-or-later to the source code. It restricts only the use of the trademarks. If in doubt, ask at trademark@freepdfeditor.org before publishing.