Reinforcing the Blender Trademark Guidelines April 18th, 2025 News Francesco Siddi html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" As Blender grows in popularity, the amount of products and projects using “Blender” as part of their name is growing as well. While there are some short-term benefits in incorporating the “Blender” name in a product, there are often unintended consequences when it reaches a wider audience. For example: An extension becomes popular and starts charging a fee to download. Using Blender as part of the brand could imply a relationship or endorsement from the Blender project.  A community website or service starts being considered official or affiliated to the project, because it contains the Blender name in it. In reality, the project is fully independent. With the introduction of the Blender Extensions platform, branding issues become more obvious, as add-ons that have “Blender” in their name could appear right inside the software, creating confusion.  As general branding guidelines for products or services, we recommend third parties to avoid using the name “Blender”, especially not as the start of the name. Blender Foundation wishes to distinguish official products or services that way. For example: Blender Conference, Blender Extensions, Blender ID. This explained in detail in the Trademark Policy page. While we understand that using the name “Blender” in a product will give quick recognition and short term benefits, it is also common sense that in the mid and long term developing a unique own brand for products will always be more beneficial. It allows you to trademark it, promote it, and expand it beyond Blender itself. Besides that, brand diversity in the Blender ecosystem is highly desirable, as it reflects the amount of independent business happening around Blender. This is what happened with Blender Market. At the time (15 years ago), the idea of creating a commercial Blender-focused marketplace was truly pioneering, and that initiative was welcomed and supported by Blender Foundation. Initially, it was helpful for the market to bear Blender’s name as it helped with discoverability. Today, not so much, as it often gets mistaken for Blender’s actual marketplace.  Blender does not have plans to create an add-on marketplace, but rather focus on the free extensions platform, so it becomes important to set a distinction between the two. Last year, Autotroph (the organization behind Blender Market) announced the decision to rebrand the marketplace to “Superhive”, in an effort to align with the Blender trademark policies. The rebrand is now in place, and this is something that Blender Foundation highly appreciates.  Existing and new products featuring the Blender name are encouraged to follow Blender Market’s steps. We understand that websites and products using the name Blender already for a long time, will not find it practical or desirable to rename.  Blender Foundation does not intend to seek legal or public action in cases of such trademark violations. However, Blender Foundation does reserve the right to not advertise confusingly named Blender products on the extensions platform. For more information, blender.org/about/trademark-policy.