Khronos owns, or has licensed, trademarks used to identify its activities and specifications such as Vulkan® and OpenGL®. The trademarks used by Khronos are collectively referred to as the Marks. Khronos maintains strict control over usage of the Marks to protect the integrity of its specifications. This document defines who may use the Marks, and under what terms and conditions.
The Marks are protected in text and logo form, for example, the text string “Vulkan” is a registered trademark as is the Vulkan logo. Usage of the Marks not in association with specific implementations is generally welcomed and covered by section 2.
Marks that are used in association with a specific implementation of a Khronos specification are tightly controlled under the terms of the Khronos Adopters Agreement. Implementations that use the Marks must have passed the Khronos Conformance Process to ensure a consistent standard of functionality and interoperability. These uses are covered in section 3 with additional clarifications in section 4.
The Khronos Adopters Agreement provides access to conformance tests for verification by Khronos that a product or implementation conforms to the specification. Companies that wish to implement and ship an implementation of a Khronos specification using the Marks must execute the Adopters Agreement, with an associated Adopters fee, for each version of that specification. The Adopters agreement includes a trademark license, so that conformant implementations may use the name and logo of the specification under these guidelines. Becoming an Adopter is independent from Khronos Membership, i.e. Members that implement a specification must also become Adopters, but a company does not need to be a Member to become an Adopter.
Platform vendors may adopt a Khronos specification into their platform definition under the terms of section 5.
Companies or individuals that are not members of Khronos and who wish to use a Mark for promotional or educational purposes NOT in association with a specific implementation of a Khronos Specification are welcome to use Marks under the publicly posted Khronos Trademark Usage Guidelines.
Khronos members may use Marks for general purposes according to the terms and conditions in the Khronos Membership Agreement while following the usage guidelines above. Members that are not Adopters of a specification are excluded from using a Mark (in text or logo form) in association with an implementation of that specification.
Examples:
This section defines how Adopters may use the Marks in association with a specific implementation during phases of a specification’s development, including draft specifications that have not been publicly released and specifications that do not have a defined Conformance Process. All use of the Marks must follow the Khronos Trademark Usage Guidelines.
In general, if the final version of the specification is not yet ratified or the Conformance Process for a specification is not yet finalized, Members and Adopters may NOT use wording associated with that product such as “conformant”, “compliant”, “complies with”, “supports”, “full implementation” or any other term that implies in any way that the implementation is officially compliant. The reasoning is that until the final specification is ratified AND the Conformance Process is finalized the precise meaning of “conformant” is not defined.
Khronos may provide a version of the logo that includes the word ‘Prototype’ (a Prototype Logo) specifically for use in product demonstrations as laid out in this section.
Also, once the Conformance Process is available for a specification ANY company using a Mark (in text or logo form) in association with a specific implementation MUST be a fully paid and signed up Adopter of that specification.
Any wording mandated in these guidelines may be placed in footnotes if desired, but must be clearly indicated and plainly readable.
A Member with a prototype implementation of a draft specification that has not yet been publicly released may use the relevant Mark in association with the implementation with the following restrictions:
A Member with an implementation of a specification that does not have a defined Conformance Process may use the relevant Mark in association with the implementation with the following restrictions:
An Adopter with an implementation of a published specification that has not yet been submitted to the Khronos Conformance Process may use the relevant Mark in association with the implementation with the following restrictions:
An Adopter with an implementation of a published specification that has been submitted to the Khronos Conformance Process and is in the Submission Review Period, including any restarts of the Review Period, may use the relevant Mark in text AND logo form in association with the implementation, and any materials using the Mark must state:
“Product is based on a published Khronos Specification and has been submitted to, and is expected to pass, the Khronos Conformance Process. Current conformance status can be found at www.khronos.org/conformance.”
An Adopter that has an implementation of a published specification that has been submitted to and passed the Khronos Conformance Process may use the relevant Mark in text AND logo form and Adopters may state that their products are conformant or compliant with the specification with statements similar to:
“Product is conformant with [Khronos Specification]”
“Product is compliant with [Khronos Specification]”
“Product complies with [Khronos Specification]”
“Product is a full implementation of [Khronos Specification]”
“Product supports [Khronos Specification]”
This section clarifies the use of the Marks for specific situations.
If a publicly available specification is Provisional then the following wording must added to or merged with the appropriate wording specified in section 3:
“Product is based on a provisional Khronos Specification, which may change before final release. Current specification status can be found at www.khronos.org/specname.”
For example, for a provisional specification without an available Conformance Process:
“Product is based on a provisional Khronos specification which may change before final release. Product is expected to pass the Khronos Conformance Process when available. Current conformance status can be found at www.khronos.org/conformance and current specification status can be found at www.khronos.org/specname.”
An Adopter that has implemented a component of a published specification may use the relevant Mark in text AND logo form in association with the component ONLY WHEN that component has been used within a complete conformant implementation that has been submitted to and passed the Khronos Conformance Process. In which case the following wording must be added to or merged with the appropriate wording specified in section 3:
“This software is based on a published Khronos Specification and is expected to pass the relevant parts of the Khronos Conformance Testing Process when used as part of a conformant Vulkan implementation.”
Any company using a Mark (in text or logo form) within a platform or operating system definition that references a Khronos specification MUST be a fully paid and signed up Adopter of that specification AND mandate that Khronos Conformance for products implementing the referenced specifications is a part of the certification procedure for that platform.