Trademark Guidelines for the Alliance for Open Media

Alliance for Open Media™, AOMedia™, AOM™ – people refer to us by several monikers. Each of those terms, as well as our Alliance for Open Media logo, the AV1™ name and logo, and the names of our other specifications are trademarks that we manage as custodians of our brand and technology. Our marks play a key role in maintaining our reputation and the goodwill behind the work we do. These guidelines break down how to use our marks appropriately, so we can keep up the expectations of quality associated with AOMedia.

A Little Context

The Alliance for Open Media develops audio-visual standards. We have different groups working in different areas and applications, with global participation from all kinds of stakeholders. We encourage the widespread adoption of our standards – and that includes getting the word out.

Our most popular standard right now, resulting from our original work, is the AV1 standard. It’s our only specification that has its own logo and we have dedicated a whole section to use and reference to AV1 below.

We’ll continue to update these guidelines to cover new technology and activities– so as you see us announce new developments, check back here to see what’s changed.

General Rules

Before we get into the details, we want to first make clear that anyone can always use our word marks to refer to us or our activities, standards and software if the references are accurate and don’t imply any endorsement by or affiliation with us.

As with any use of a trademark, there are some general best practices to follow with any use of our marks:

Do’s

Attribute the marks to us (“AOMedia™ is a trademark of the Alliance for Open Media, a Joint Development Foundation project/The Linux Foundation”) and make the mark stand out, to help clearly indicate that it’s a trademark.
Use the marks as adjectives, not as nouns, verbs or possessives, e.g., “AV1 technology” or “AV1 video”.
Make sure all uses are accurate and refer to what the mark identifies (AOM to describe the Alliance for Open Media, or IAMF™ as a specification, etc.)
Do bring attention to the Alliance for Open Media, your AOMedia membership, and our work – thank you for spreading the word.

Don’ts

Don’t imply that you or any of your products, services, or implementations are endorsed by us, or that they have been certified – we’re not doing that… yet. This includes making sure you don’t use our marks in product names or as part of domain names, and that you don’t display our marks first or more prominently than your own.
Don’t change our marks or combine them with other marks.
Don’t try to register our marks, derivatives of them, or claim you own them.
Don’t use our marks to disparage us or our work with false or misleading claims or untruthful characterizations.

If your use of our marks follows these guidelines (and for our AV1 marks, the specifics in the section below), you’re probably good. And if you aren’t sure, just ask us.

AV1 Promotion Specifics

We want to see AV1 implemented! As long as your implementation actually implements the specification, then we encourage you to promote that fact. We just want to be extra careful about how you use it to avoid giving the impression that we’ve officially signed off on your product or that we are involved with the product in any way. The clearest way to do that is to clearly separate the AV1 marks from your product name and make clear that the reference indicates the implementation of the specification (ie. “[PRODUCT NAME] implements the AV1™ specification”). And remember to respect all the dos and don’ts above – don’t include it in a product name or use it more prominently than your own branding & attribute ownership of the mark to us, etc.

We like our AV1 logo and are grateful you do too. If you want to use the AV1 logo to promote that your product implements the specification, make sure you are using an/the official version and don’t change it (that means no color changes, no changes to its shape, no creative adaptations). You can also use it to promote the specification and link back to us and our site, but if you want to use it in other ways, check with us first.

Again – if you still have questions after reading this, just ask.

Last Updated: 2024-12-19