Automattic Inc. owns and oversees the Woo trademark and a family of Woo-formative marks. These include, but are not limited to Woo®, WooCommerce®, WooExpert®, Woo PartnerTM, WooPayTM, WooPaymentsTM, WooThemes®, Hosted WooTM, Managed WooTM, and related designs (collectively, the “Woo Marks”).
The goal of these guidelines is to guide you in which circumstances you can use certain Woo Marks without seeking pre-approval from us, and which circumstances you cannot.
Our guidelines seek a balance between ensuring that the Woo Marks are used solely to refer to Woo, its affiliated companies and its products and services, while still allowing you to use certain Woo Marks to reference the compatibility of your products with WooCommerce.
An open-source software license is a form of copyright license. It’s important to not confuse an open-source software license with a trademark license. Trademarks indicate the source of goods and services and ensure that consumers are not mislead about the identity of the supplier; while copyright is a legal mechanism allowing the creator of a literary or artistic work (e.g., software code) in a tangible form to control who can make subsequent copies of the work. In the software world, trademark protects the name of the software while copyright protects the software code.
Any open-source licenses on software released by Automattic cover copyright only, and do not include any express or implied right to use Automattic trademarks. That means any of our open-source software code may be copied, modified, or sold by third parties, however it cannot be branded, marketed, or titled with any of our trademarks without an express trademark license from us. In other words, you can do what you want with our open-source software code, but you are not allowed to use any aspect of our branding or product names, regardless of whether you have modified our software or are passing around what you believe are duplicate copies of it. For example, if you develop something for WooCommerce, the name of your product must not include “Woo” or “WooCommerce.”
Use the WooCommerce trademark in plain text, non-stylized format (and not logo format) to:
Unless you have a trademark license with us, do not use the Woo Marks:
You may not use the WooCommerce and Woo logos for any purpose.
Whenever you use our trademarks, please always follow our guidelines below.We reserve the right to at any time revoke your permission to use the Woo Marks for any reason, including if we determine that the use is likely to confuse others about our involvement with or the source of your product or service or trades on the goodwill of the Woo Marks.
Likewise, if you have an approved use of our logo and have questions about colors, sizing, proportions, etc., please contact us.
You must name your product or service something unique that is dissimilar to and distinguishable from Woo, Automattic and the Woo Marks. Use of the WooCommerce trademark should be used solely to refer to the compatibility of your product, or that you provide support for our products and services.
To denote compatibility, you must:
Please see the Examples below for how these rules apply in practice.
If you’d like to use a Woo Mark for reasons other than those listed above, please ask our permission by contacting us via the form at the bottom of this page. We may grant permission to high-quality projects that further the WooCommerce community.
Here are examples of how you may and may not use a certain Woo Marks.
| Allowed | Not allowed |
|---|---|
| You may use our name in plain letters (not our logo) to describe how your products or services are compatible with or support Woo or WooCommerce. E.g., “We offer consulting services for small businesses using WooCommerce.” “We offer hosting for sites made with WooCommerce.” | Do not include any Woo Marks (either a Woo name or Logo) in the name of your company, brand, product, service or feature. E.g., Don’t call yourself “The WooCommerce Consulting Company” or that you offer “WooCommerce Hosting.” |
| You may use our name to refer or link to our official products. E.g., “We provide services for products sold by WooCommerce.com.” | Do not use the Woo Marks in any way that suggests a special relationship with or endorsement from Automattic, such as your company being part of Automattic. E.g., Don’t call your products “WooUpgrade,” “Woo Consulting,” “Woo Hosting.”or “WooThemes Bundles.” (“Bundles for WooThemes” would be ok.) |
| You may use the Woo Marks in non-commercial educational projects that promote the spread of official WooCommerce products, so long as you use the Woo Marks solely to refer to WooCommerce, Automattic and its products and services. E.g., Using the WooCommerce name and to advertise a class about using WooCommerce. | Do not use the name Woo or the Woo logo or any of the Woo Marks to sell Woo’s own products. E.g., You can’t resell WooCommerce plugins or themes using the Woo Marks. |
| You may use the word “Woo” in a domain name that does not reference ecommerce or website building nor suggest an affiliation to Automattic. E.g., WooHoo.com may be ok if your site/product has nothing to do with ecommerce or websites and does not suggest any affiliation to Automattic. | In a domain name, using the words “WooThemes”, or “WooCommerce” in any way, or using “Woo” in your domain name as a reference to WooCommerce or in a way that suggests an affiliation to Automattic. Examples of domain names that would not be permitted uses: BestWooThemes.com, WooCommerceConsulting.com, or TheWooShop.com. |
| You may call yourself an expert at using WooCommerce. E.g., I have extensive expertise deploying WooCommerce. | Do not call yourself a WooExpert without being pre-approved to participate in our WooExpert® program. E.g., Calling ABC System Integrators a WooExpert® is only permitted when ABC is indeed an approved member of our WooExpert Program. |
These instructions are designed to apply to those who either have a trademark license from WooCommerce or who are using the Woo trademarks for the permitted purposes described above.
Use the exact mark: The Woo Marks should be used in their exact, most up-to-date form, which you can find here. They should neither be abbreviated nor combined with other words, or amended in any way. The Woo Marks should always be capitalized. The WooCommerce and WooExpert marks should always use a capital “W” in “Woo” and a capital “C” for “Commerce” and “E” for “Expert.”
Mark the mark: The Woo, WooCommerce and WooExpert marks accompanied by a circle” symbol (“®”) on first/most prominent use. All other trademarks can be accompanied by a “™” symbol.
Credit the mark: The following notice text should appear somewhere nearby your first or most prominent mention of a Woo Mark (for example in a footer). If that’s not practical, you may include it in a reasonable alternate location:
[insert Woo Mark] and its associated designs are trademarks of Automattic Inc.
Any goodwill generated by use of the Woo Marks shall inure solely to the benefit of Automattic.
When in doubt about your use of any Woo Marks, please contact Automattic using the form below for clarification. We’ll answer as soon as possible.
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