# Legal Topics

This chapter provides guidelines on how to use trademarks in GNOME documentation.

## Trademarks

Avoid using trademarked terms in free software documentation.

## Copyrights

You must place the copyright notice in a manner and location that gives reasonable notice to the claim of copyright. In GNOME documentation, always use the front matter page for the copyright notice. See the front matter page of this style guide for an example of the appropriate way to assign copyrights.

### Use of the Copyright Word and the Copyright Symbol

The front matter sections in templates for GNOME documentation are set up to generate both the word Copyright, and the copyright symbol ©. Although the use of both the copyright word and the copyright symbol together is not required in the USA and in many other countries, you should include both in GNOME documentation for the following reasons:

1. There are no formal copyright notice requirements in the Berne Convention.

2. The Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) states that any formality in a national law may be satisfied by placing a copyright notice consisting of © [copyright date] [copyright owner]. Therefore, although the notice Copyright © [copyright date] [copyright owner] might be redundant in jurisdictions that are members of the Berne Convention and the UCC, this is the notice that provides the most copyright coverage worldwide.

3. The use of the word Copyright spelled out is also helpful in the case where the © symbol cannot be displayed. This is particularly helpful when the work on which the notice is affixed is in electronic form.

### Copyrights for Multiple Authors

Assign a general copyright to each author in the front matter page. You do not need to add a separate copyright page for each section that each individual author provides. To credit authors for specific contributions to different parts of a book, you can add an author list as an appendix to your book. See in this book for an example of an author list as an appendix.

## Applying the GFDL

Familiarize yourself with the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). All GNOME documentation is published under the GFDL. A free software license allows you to use and modify information published under that license.

## History

A history section is mandatory for all documents released under the GFDL, even if you are writing a new manual. You must retain history data from previous versions of any manual that you modify. See the About This Document page of this guide for an example of the appropriate way to record history information.

## Acknowledgements

You only need to include a section for acknowledgements if you have acknowledgement data. You must retain acknowledgements from any GFDL-licensed documentation from which you draw information, in an Acknowledgements section. Under the terms of the GFDL, you must also include copyrights in your manual for any GFDL-licensed documentation from which you draw information. However, in the context of the GNOME project, you can contact copyright holders for source documentation and ask if they are willing to waive their copyrights in the manual that you are writing. If authors of source documentation do waive their copyrights for your manual, you must still acknowledge your sources in the Acknowledgements section.