Legal, trademark & patent policy
Plain-language summary first. Detail below. If you ship a product that interoperates with KYE Protocol™, read this once.
1 · Copyright & licence
The vocabulary, ID format, JSON Schemas, OpenAPI specifications, examples, reference Gateway source, SDKs, conformance fixtures, this landing page, and the whitepaper are licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 unless an individual file specifies otherwise. Forks and derivative works are permitted under the licence’s terms.
2 · Trademark policy
KYE™, KYE Protocol™, and Know Your Entity™ are trademarks of the KYE Protocol™ project. They identify the protocol as published in github.com/KYE-Protocol.
You may:
- Refer to “KYE Protocol™” in documentation, blog posts, conference talks, and code comments to identify the protocol you are integrating with.
- Describe your product as “KYE Protocol™-compatible” or “conformant with KYE Protocol™ v1.0” once your implementation passes the public conformance fixture pack.
- Use the marks in factual comparison materials.
You may not:
- Use “KYE”, “KYE Protocol”, or “Know Your Entity” in your product’s name, domain name, organisation name, or logo.
- Apply the marks to a forked, modified, or unrelated project that is not the published protocol.
- Imply endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation with the KYE Protocol™ project where none exists.
First-prominent use in a public document should carry the ™ symbol. Subsequent uses on the same page may drop it.
3 · Patent policy
The publicly published vocabulary, URN format, schemas and OpenAPI specifications are intended to remain royalty-free for any conformant implementation, and are released under the patent grant clause of Apache License 2.0.
Specific mechanism designs — the exact algorithms used for decision evaluation, hash-chain construction, cascade ordering, attenuation propagation, and signal-driven invalidation — sit in a separate patent track. They are intentional placeholders in the public repositories (see private/mechanisms/ in the development repo) pre-filing, in order to preserve novelty under EU and UK absolute-novelty rules.
Once filed, the mechanism designs will be made available royalty-free for any conformant implementation. The exact terms (free for conformant use; defensive termination clause) will be published here and in the relevant repositories at that time.
If you are integrating against KYE Protocol™ today and need written assurance about the patent track, open a discussion at KYE-Protocol/Discussions or contact the maintainers.
4 · Contributions
Contributions are accepted via pull request to the relevant public repository. By contributing, you agree to license your contribution under Apache 2.0 and to the inbound-equals-outbound principle.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the practical workflow and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for the community standards.
5 · Security
Vulnerabilities should be reported privately, not in a public issue or discussion. See SECURITY.md for the disclosure process and PGP key.
6 · Contact
For trademark questions, security advisories, patent licensing, or anything that doesn’t belong in a public discussion, see the contact paths in the org profile README.