Commentary:Introduction

The "Commentary" pages are are explanatory material relevant to those adopting the Model Trademark Guidelines, like Reporter's Notes for a Restatement or advisory committee notes for model laws. They provide information to the end users of the guidelines about the legal, practical and ideological rationale embodied in the guidelines.

If you want to discuss what's on the Commentary page, use the "Discussion" tab for the Commentary page.

Commentary on the Introduction

The goals of the introduction are to:

• Clarify the relationship between open source licenses and trademark licenses;
• Explain the role of trademarks and the policy basis for restricting the use of trademarks;
• Describe scope of the policy, i.e., to clarify what uses the project finds acceptable and unacceptable.

The overall philosophy is not restrict the use of trademarks in ways that would not also be considered a trademark infringement. Therefore, the role of the policy is to define what the project would consider unlawful uses, but do it in a way that is clearer than what one would find in bare statements of legal doctrine like "you may not use a mark in a way that is confusing."