Piwik Trademark

Piwik is now Matomo

In January 2018, Piwik was renamed to Matomo.

We recommend that you use Matomo everywhere instead of Piwik.

For historical reference, please find below the original Piwik Trademark Policy.

Trademark Policy

The objective of the Piwik trademark policy is to control the use of the name in order to avoid confusion on the part of Piwik users and the general public, to maintain the value of the image and reputation of the trademarks and to protect them from inappropriate or unauthorised use.

The sections below describe what is allowed, what isn’t allowed, and cases in which you should ask permission.

If you have any doubt, please contact us and a member of team will be in touch with you shortly.

If you are aware of a breach or misuse of the Piwik trademarks in any way, we would appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Please contact us so that we can investigate this further.

The trademarks

The Piwik project owns the trademark PIWIK. The trademark is registered in word form. Any mark containing the letters PIWIK is sufficiently similar to one or more of the trademarks that permission will be needed in order to use it. This policy encompasses all marks, in word and logo form, collectively referred to as “Trademarks”.

Permitted use

Certain usages of the Trademarks are fine and no specific permission from us is needed.

Community advocacy. Piwik is built by, and largely for, its community. We share access to the Trademarks with the entire community for the purposes of discussion, development and advocacy. We recognise that most of the open source discussion and development areas are for non-commercial purposes and will allow the use of the trademarks in this context, provided:

  • The Trademark is used in a manner consistent with the Usage Guidelines below
  • There is no commercial intent behind the use
  • What you are referring to is in fact Piwik. If someone is confused into thinking that what isn’t Piwik is in fact Piwik, you are probably doing something wrong
  • There is no suggestion (through words or appearance) that your project is approved, sponsored, or affiliated with Piwik or its related projects unless it actually has been approved by and is accountable to the Piwik team.

Derived works. The ability to customise Piwik to meet your specific needs is one of the great strengths of free software in general, and Piwik in particular. While we encourage customisation and derivation of Piwik, we must balance that freedom with the integrity of the Trademarks and the quality which they represent. To help reach that balance, we have established the following guidelines and definitions.

We recognise and encourage the concept of a “remix.” Remixes are derived versions of Piwik, and it is intended that any software and hardware certifications will apply to a Remix. Therefore the changes from the official Piwik product must be minimal to be permitted to use the Trademarks. These changes can include configuration changes, changes to artwork and graphical themes and some variance in package selection. In general, a Remix can have plugins from the Piwik plugin repository added, or non-default plugins removed, but removing or changing any infrastructure components (e.g., Core plugins and libraries) will result in changes too large for the resulting product to be called by a Trademark. Note that if the nature of the product’s divergence from Piwik changes, the Remix naming and Trademark use may no longer apply.

Therefore, if you are creating a derivative of Piwik, you may use the Trademarks in association with the software product provided:

  • The changes are minimal and unsubstantial, as described above
  • There is no commercial intent associated with the new product
  • The Trademark is used in a way that makes it clear that your project is a development effort related to the Piwik source, but that the software you are working upon is not in fact Piwik as distributed by the Piwik project. The approved naming scheme to facilitate this is through designation “Remix”. Any other naming scheme will require explicit permission.
  • There is no suggestion (through words or appearance) that your project is approved, sponsored, or affiliated with Piwik or its related projects unless it has been approved by and is governed by the Piwik team.

If you are producing a new product which is based on Piwik but which has more substantial changes than those described above as a Remix, you are allowed to state (and we would encourage you to do so) that your product is “derived from Piwik”, “based on Piwik”, or “a derivative of Piwik” but you may not use the Trademarks to refer to your product. In some cases you may be allowed to use the Trademarks, but we’ll need to discuss that. In that event, these products will need a trademark license, and such a license can be revoked if the nature of your divergence from Piwik changes. Products which include very invasive changes, such as a new libraries, the inclusion of plugins which are not part of the Piwik plugin repository, or anything else that significantly impacts the technical quality or user experience would fall into this category are unlikely to be approved. (Note that if you are including plugins which are not part of the Piwik plugin repository, we encourage you to work within the community processes to submit and maintain those packages within the repository in order to minimise this issue.)

Building on Piwik or for Piwik. If you are producing new software which is intended for use with or on Piwik, you may use the Trademark in a way which indicates the intent of your product. For example, if you are developing an integration plugin for Piwik, acceptable project titles may be “XYZ Integration for Piwik”, “Analytics for XYZ – Powered by Piwik”, or “Piwik Powered Analytics for XYZ”. We would strongly discourage, and likely would consider to be problematic, a name such as PiwikXYZ, Piwik Analytics, Piwik Web Analytics, Piwik Plugin, PiwikTracker, Piwik Mobile, etc. Furthermore, you may not use the Trademarks in a way which implies an endorsement where that doesn’t exist, or which attempts to unfairly or confusingly capitalise on the goodwill or brand of the project.

Commentary and parody. The Piwik trademarks are designed to cover use of a mark to imply origin or endorsement by the project. When a user downloads something called Piwik, they should know it comes from the Piwik project. This helps Piwik build a reputation that will not be damaged by confusion around what is, and isn’t, Piwik. Using the trademarks in your discussion, commentary, criticism or parody, in ways that unequivocally do not imply endorsement, is permissible. Anyone is free to write articles, create websites, blog about, or talk about Piwik — as long as it’s clear to everyone — including people completely unfamiliar with Piwik — that they are simply referring to Piwik and in no way speaking for the Piwik team, or the Piwik project.

We reserve the right to review all usage within the open source community, and to object to any usage that appears to overstep the bounds of discussion and good-faith non-commercial development. In any event, once a project has left the open source project phase or otherwise become a commercial project, this policy does not authorise any use of the Trademarks in connection to that project.

Restricted use that requires a trademark licence

Permission from us is necessary to use any of the Trademarks under any circumstances other than those specifically permitted above. These include:

  • Any commercial use.
  • Use on or in relation to a software product that includes or is built on top of a product supplied by us, if there is any commercial intent associated with that product.
  • Use in a domain name or URL.
  • Use for merchandising purposes, e.g. on t-shirts and the like.
  • Use of a name which includes the letters PIWIK in relation to computer hardware or software.
  • Services relating to any of the above.

If you wish to have permission for any of the uses above or for any other use which is not specifically referred to in this policy, please contact us and we’ll let you know as soon as possible if your proposed use is permissible. Note that due to the volume of mail we receive, it may take up to a week to process your request. Permission may only be granted subject to certain conditions and these may include the requirement that you enter into an agreement with us to maintain the quality of the product and/or service which you intend to supply at a prescribed level.

While there may be exceptions, it is very unlikely that we will approve Trademark use in the following cases:

  • Use of a Trademark in a company name.
  • Use of a Trademark in a domain name which has a commercial intent. The commercial intent can range from promotion of a company or product, to collecting revenue generated by advertising.
  • The calling of any software or product by the name PIWIK (or another related Trademark), unless that software or product is a substantially unmodified Piwik product, or properly labelled as a “Remix” as described above.
  • Use in combination with any other marks or logos. This include use of a Trademark in a manner that creates a “combined mark,” or use that integrates other wording with the Trademark in a way that the public may think of the use as a new mark (for example iPiwik, MyPiwik or PHPPiwik, or in a way that by use of special fonts or presentation with nearby words or images conveys an impression that the two are tied in some way).
  • Use in combination with any product or service which is presented as being Certified or Official or formally associated with us or our products or services.
  • Use in a way which implies an endorsement where that doesn’t exist, or which attempts to unfairly or confusingly capitalise on the goodwill or brand of the project.
  • Use of a Trademark in a manner that disparages Piwik, the project, the team or its products and is not clearly third-party parody.
  • On or in relation to a software product which constitutes a substantially modified version of a product supplied by the Piwik project, that is to say with material changes to the code, or services relating to such a product.
  • In a title or metatag of a web page whose sole intention or result is to influence search engine rankings or result listings, rather than for discussion, development or advocacy of the Trademarks.

Logo usage guidelines

Our logos are presented in multiple colours and it is important that their visual integrity be maintained. It is therefore preferable that the logos only be used in their standard form but if you should feel the need to alter them in any way you should keep the following guidelines in mind. It should also be borne in mind that the more you wish to vary our logos from their standard form the smaller is the chance that we will be able to approve your proposed use.

  • If presented in multiple colours, the logo should only use the “official” logo colours.
  • You may use transparency and gradient/depth tools but should retain the “official” colours.
  • A monochrome version may be acceptable in certain situations, if the use requires it (e.g. desktop backgrounds).
  • Any scaling must retain the original proportions of the logo.

Summary

Thank you for reading this far. Contact us if you have any question or suggestion… and maybe you would be interested in contributing to Piwik.

This trademark policy is published under the CC-BY-SA license, and based on the Ubuntu project’s trademark policy.

See also these related pages: check out our Piwik supporters, send your requirements to Professional Services, read some of our user testimonials.