Medium’s Trademark Policy

To report a trademark violation on Medium, please fill out this form.

People write about all kinds of things on Medium. Sometimes they reference companies or products. Sometimes they subtly (or not) promote brands. All fine by us. What Medium doesn’t allow is using someone else’s trademark in a way likely to confuse people.

What’s a trademark?

A trademark can be lots of things, but usually it’s a word, phrase or design (like a company name, a product name, a slogan or a logo). It shows you that this good or service comes from one company as opposed to some other company.

Trademarks exist to prevent consumer confusion over the source of a particular good or service. They also stop one company from free-riding on another company’s investment in branding. By contrast, they do not exist to help a company stop someone from discussing it (or its products) or to end secondary markets.

Someone’s using my trademark on Medium. What do I do?

If you think someone’s using your trademark in a way that’s likely to confuse readers, let us know and we will take appropriate action. This might include temporarily or permanently removing the content.

If you find infringement of your trademark on Medium, please fill out this form.

If someone’s using my trademark, in what scenarios would you not take it down?

• If they’re using it in a way not likely to confuse anyone about the source of a good/service.
• If they are making fair use of it, such as nominative fair use. This is when someone uses a trademark to refer to a company or brand, not to indicate it is the source of a good or service. For example, if someone writes a story about Company X and in that story uses the phrase “Company X” to refer to “Company X,” that’s probably fair use. Even if “Company X” is your trademark. People are allowed to use your company or product name to write things, even negative things, about your company/product/brand. As long as they’re not confusing anyone about whether you authorized or endorse the post.