Today, we have adopted a new trademark policy for the Zcash trademarks. You can read the full policy here.
In this blog post, we highlight some of the important changes, and explain why we believe this new approach supports and enables greater decentralization of the Zcash ecosystem.
Background
For the past five years, use of the Zcash trademarks was governed by an agreement between the Zcash Foundation (ZF) and the Electric Coin Company (ECC). Following ECC’s decision to terminate that agreement, ZF became the sole steward of the trademarks. This provided an opportunity to review and update the trademark policy to reflect the growing decentralization of the Zcash ecosystem.
Our overarching objective in making these changes is to allow members of the Zcash community to use the trademarks as broadly and permissively as possible for purposes that are natural and well-intentioned in the context of a decentralized cryptocurrency, while still protecting the trademarks (and thus, Zcash’s name, brand and reputation) from misuse by those who seek to mislead, deceive or defraud.
Key Changes
At a high level, the changes introduced in this new trademark policy are aimed at making it:
- Shorter and simpler: The most obvious change is that the new trademark policy is shorter and simpler. The old policy was adapted from the Model Trademark Guidelines, which are intended for open source software projects. By reviewing the policy from the perspective of Zcash as a cryptocurrency, we were able to make it shorter, simpler, and therefore easier to understand.
- More permissive: The new policy is also more permissive. The old policy was drafted in a way that required that certain uses be explicitly licensed. While we sought to make it as simple as possible to license the trademark, it still required paperwork, which discouraged some people and teams.
- Minimized in scope: The new policy seeks to minimize the scope of uses that must be explicitly licensed. For example, the old policy permitted the use of the Zcash trademarks on promotional goods for free giveaways but not for sale. This meant that anyone who wanted to make and sell Zcash-branded merchandise was required to obtain a license from ZF. The new policy removes this restriction, meaning that anyone can now make and sell Zcash-branded merchandise, like stickers, t-shirts or mugs.
Eliminating the Trademark’s Role in Zcash Governance
The trademark agreement created a governance role for the trademarks by stipulating that network upgrades were subject to approval by both ECC and ZF. If either party objected to the activation of a network upgrade, the Zcash trademarks could no longer be applied to either fork of the blockchain.
The ZF Board believes that it is no longer appropriate to use the Zcash trademarks in this way.
Zcash is a decentralized cryptocurrency, defined by a documented protocol, and implemented as open source software (most notably zcashd and Zebra). The nature of open source software means that anyone is free to copy and modify that software, including making modifications to the way the Zcash protocol is implemented. They may then invite others to run that software. If this were to occur without broad consensus support across the Zcash community and ecosystem, it could result in a contentious hard fork.
In the event of a persistent contentious hard fork, in order to prevent user confusion, the Zcash Foundation may use the Zcash trademarks to call for specific naming conventions at exchanges or other entities to clearly distinguish between the two tines of the fork. However, the Zcash Foundation will endeavor to not use the Zcash trademarks as a means of persuading the larger public that one tine of the fork or the other is the canonical and only legitimate version of Zcash.
Conclusion
As Zcash and its ecosystem evolves and become more decentralized, the structures that have built up to support Zcash must also evolve. The Zcash Foundation is committed to ensuring that it adapts to better serve the Zcash mission and community. That commitment includes supporting ongoing decentralization of the Zcash ecosystem, and this new trademark policy is an important step in that direction.
As always, we are keen to hear the community’s feedback and suggestions (both of which helped inform our decision-making on this policy), so please engage on the Zcash Community forums.
