A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, logo or design, or a combination of those things, that distinguishes one company's products and services from the products and services of another. Examples of trademarks include Red Hat®, Fedora Core™, and MySQL® for software products and related services. Although a trademark is a symbol of the source of a product or service, a trademark is not the product or service itself. A trademark also is not the same as a copyright or a patent.
XenSource, Inc. (“XenSource”) owns the Xen™, XenEnterprise™ and XenSource™ trademarks, as well as various other related marks, such as the Xen logo and various applications to register those marks in the United States and around the world. The basis for XenSource's exclusive ownership of the Xen marks includes the worldwide use rights established by the University of Cambridge. Both the unregistered and registered marks of XenSource are protected under applicable trademark and other laws.
Trademarks are important because they help to prevent confusion in the marketplace by distinguishing one company's or person's products and services from the products and services of another company or person. Unauthorized use of the Xen mark, the XenSource mark, or any other trademark owned by XenSource, Inc., is not permitted. In order to exercise and maintain quality control over products and services for which its marks are used, XenSource requires strict adherence to this Trademark Policy.
XenSource is a committed supporter of the open source distribution model. This support is perhaps most evident in XenSource's open development and other support of the Xen™ hypervisor, which XenSource makes available under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License (the “GPL”). Although the GPL permits third parties to copy, modify and redistribute any portion of the software, the GPL does not grant any license or right to use the Xen trademark or any other XenSource trademark in connection with the redistribution of that software.
Thus, although a GPL licensee may redistribute the underlying Xen software in accordance with the terms and conditions of the GPL, a GPL licensee may not use the Xen trademark or any other XenSource trademark when doing so except as expressly permitted by this policy or a separate license agreement with XenSource, Inc., or under rights of nominative fair use. Otherwise, users could be misled into thinking that revisions made by a GPL licensee were created or endorsed by XenSource, or that those revisions met the quality control standards of XenSource for the Xen hypervisor.
XenSource and its predecessors, together with the Xen community, have strived to create a hypervisor of the highest quality, yet freely available under the GPL in a consistent form. XenSource has chosen the Xen mark to enable consumers to easily identify that product.
XenSource is committed to the broad deployment of a single, common, interoperable and open Xen hypervisor code-base. Because the delivery to market of multiple incompatible, derived versions of the open sourced Xen code base would conflict with the community and ecosystem goals articulated above, and could lead to customer confusion, fragmentation of the market and an inability of vendors to rely on the quality, interoperability and consistency of the feature set offered by the Xen hypervisor, you may not use the Xen mark in association with your product without permission of XenSource.
XenSource actively endorses the distribution of official, versions of the Xen hypervisor in 3rd party products, and will offer a royalty-free license to use the “Includes Xen” logo to vendors in the Xen ecosystem for their delivery of Official Versions of the Xen hypervisor, when those vendors contribute all of their modifications (whether bug-fixes or feature enhancements) to the Xen open source project for the benefit of the community and agree to the terms of the Xen trademark license. To learn more, please see the Xen Trademark FAQs.
Xen is a trademark of XenSource and may only be used as a trademark with the express prior permission of XenSource. Thus, except as expressly permitted in this XenSource Trademark Policy, you may not use the Xen mark or any other XenSource trademark on or in connection with your product, or in any other manner that might cause confusion in the marketplace. XenSource reserves all of its rights.
Nominative fair use is a common law principle that permits referential use of someone else's mark to describe that other person's goods or services under certain limited circumstances. For example, you may use a competitor's trademark when comparing your products with your competitor's products. Generally speaking, you may make fair use of another person's trademark only when you comply with nominative fair use conditions, which include ensuring that: (a) the other person's product or service is not readily identifiable without use of their trademark; (b) you make use of only so much of the other person's mark as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or services; and (c) your use of the mark does nothing that suggests sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder, and your conduct and language reflect the true and accurate relationship between your products and the other person's products.
To help the community better understand those uses of the Xen mark which may constitute permissible fair uses, and the conditions under which XenSource makes available a license to use the “Includes Xen” logo, please see our Xen Trademark FAQs. The Xen Trademark FAQs are designed to guide you through specific trademark questions which you may encounter when distributing unchanged and changed versions of the Xen hypervisor, such as when you may say that a bundled product “Includes Xen”. The Xen Trademark FAQs also make clear the difference between Official Versions and unstable versions of the Xen hypervisor, and define important terms such as Qualified Patch and Faithful Implementation.
While we have done our best to make this XenSource Trademark Policy and the Xen Trademark FAQs as comprehensive as possible, it is quite possible that we have not answered all of your questions, or considered a scenario that is unique to you. If you still have a burning trademark question after reviewing both the XenSource Trademark Policy and the Xen Trademark FAQs, please drop us a line at legal@xensource.com - we welcome you to contact us so that we may understand, and have an opportunity to address, your concerns.
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