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Trademark + forks

How to use the DraftGrade name (and how to fork without it)

The methodology is open. The name "DraftGrade" identifies the canonical hosted service. These two policies — trademark and fork rights — are the explicit firewall between the open commons and the commercial product. Read whichever is relevant.

DraftGrade Trademark Policy

Last updated: 2026-05-24

DraftGrade is two things at once: an open methodology and a commercial product. This document spells out which is which, and what you may or may not call your own work.

The short version

Thing Status What it means
"DraftGrade" (word mark, logo, domain) Service mark, owned by the SaaS LLC Cannot be used to brand your own product or service without written permission.
"DraftGrade Methodology v4.5" (and future versions) Name for the open standard You may use this exact phrase to describe an implementation of the open rubric + technique register, as long as you do not imply endorsement.
"DraftGrade Verified" Reserved certification mark Reserved for future use; do not use today.
"DraftGrade-Compatible" Reserved descriptor Reserved for future certification program; do not use today.
The rubric, technique register, calibration set, system prompt Open content under AGPL-3.0 and CC-BY-SA 4.0 You may freely implement, fork, redistribute under the relevant license. You just cannot call your implementation "DraftGrade."

Why this policy exists

The open methodology is meant to spread. Anyone should be able to build a citation verifier, a rubric scorer, a self-hosted Grader, or an academic tool that uses the open rubric. That is the access-to-justice mission.

The "DraftGrade" name is meant to be a single trusted identifier — one place users can go to know they're getting the methodology as the maintainers intended, with calibration tested, citations verified, accessibility audited. That is the commercial mission.

Separating the two protects both:

This is the same model used by Mozilla / Firefox, Red Hat / RHEL, and WordPress / Automattic (when the latter respects its own policy). It is the architectural firewall that lets an open commons coexist with a commercial vendor without either swallowing the other.

What you may do without asking

You may, without permission:

What requires permission

The following uses require written permission from the SaaS LLC:

To request permission, email hello@josephfus.co with the subject line Trademark request: <your use case>. We typically respond within 30 days. Permission is generally granted for nonprofit / academic / clinic uses; denied for commercial uses that would create user confusion.

What you must do if you fork

See FORK.md for the full guide. The trademark-relevant rules:

  1. Rename your fork to something that does not include "DraftGrade." Pick anything — "MotionAudit", "BriefCheck", "RubriQ", "[your-firm-name] Verify". The methodology is open; the brand is yours to invent.
  2. Acknowledge the source. A README sentence like "Built on the DraftGrade Methodology v4.5 (draftgrade.com/methodology), reused under AGPL-3.0 / CC-BY-SA 4.0" is sufficient. Anything more is generous; anything less is a license violation.
  3. Do not claim endorsement. "Compatible with the DraftGrade Methodology" is fine. "Endorsed by DraftGrade" is not.

What we will not do

We will not:

What we will do

We will:

Filing status

USPTO trademark application: filed [DATE TBD] · application serial number TBD.

This document will be updated when the registration completes (typically 8-12 months after filing). Until then, the policy operates on common-law trademark rights, which are real but narrower in scope.

Disputes

If you believe a third party is violating this policy and we should care, email hello@josephfus.co with the subject line Trademark concern: <site or product>.

If you believe we are misapplying this policy against your project, email the same address with the subject line Trademark policy dispute. We commit to a written response within 30 days. If we cannot resolve the dispute privately, we will refer to the fiscal sponsor's dispute-resolution process once that body exists.

Acknowledgments

This policy is heavily influenced by the Mozilla Trademark Policy, the Linux Foundation Trademark Usage Guidelines, and the (mostly successful) WordPress Foundation trademark posture as it existed before 2024. We borrowed the parts that worked and tried to avoid the parts that did not.

Forking DraftGrade

The DraftGrade methodology is open. The AGPL reference Grader is open. Both are designed to be forked — not as a courtesy gesture, but because the mission requires it. Pro se litigants and legal-aid clinics that can't pay for the hosted SaaS need other people to ship other implementations on top of the open rubric.

This document is the explicit "you can do this, here's how" guide. It exists because the WordPress/WP Engine drama taught the open-source world an expensive lesson: ambiguous fork rights become weaponized exactly when they matter most. We will not do that. The rights below are permanent, even if the SaaS LLC is later acquired by someone hostile.

What you can fork

Asset License What this lets you do
commons/system-prompt/ AGPL-3.0 Use the system prompt verbatim or modified, ship it, redistribute it. If you ship a hosted service built on it, your service code must also be AGPL.
commons/grader-reference/ AGPL-3.0 Self-host the Grader CLI, modify it, build a derivative tool. Same AGPL obligations apply to any hosted derivative.
commons/extensions/ AGPL-3.0 Build jurisdiction modules and motion-type overlays. Contributing yours back is welcomed but never required.
commons/rubric/ CC-BY-SA 4.0 Reproduce the rubric and technique register in your own product UI, derivative scoring tools, training materials, academic papers, journalism. Attribution required; derivatives must also be CC-BY-SA.
commons/calibration-set/ CC-BY-SA 4.0 Use the A / B / C exemplars in your own evaluations, comparative studies, training data, classroom material. Attribution required.
commons/assessments/ CC-BY-SA 4.0 Cite, quote, build on the published rubric assessments of filed motions. Attribution required.

What you can NOT fork

Asset Why not
apps/marketing/, apps/app/, infrastructure/ Proprietary, all rights reserved. Not part of the open commons.
The "DraftGrade" name and logo Service mark of the SaaS LLC. Fork the code/content, rename your fork. See TRADEMARK.md.
Customer data, user accounts, paid-feature configurations Operational SaaS data, not in this repo.
Anything in commons/ not yet published to a tagged release Pre-release work may be revised before tagging; not promised stable.

How to fork (the safe path)

  1. Clone the repo, keep only what you're using. Most forks only want commons/ — you can git clone --filter=blob:none --sparse and git sparse-checkout set commons to grab just the methodology.

  2. Pick a new name. Anything that doesn't include "DraftGrade" is fine. Some examples that would be perfectly acceptable:

    • "MotionVet" / "BriefCheck" / "RubriQ"
    • "[Your Firm] Verify" / "[Your Clinic] Drafting Tool"
    • "Legal Aid Drafting Assistant — Cook County edition"

  3. Add attribution. A line in your README (or equivalent) such as:

    Built on the DraftGrade Methodology v4.5 (draftgrade.com/methodology), reused under AGPL-3.0 / CC-BY-SA 4.0. This is not an official DraftGrade product.

  4. Honor the licenses. AGPL on the reference Grader means: if you ship it as a hosted service, your derivative service code is also AGPL and must be made available to users. CC-BY-SA on the rubric means: derivatives stay CC-BY-SA and credit the original. Neither license requires you to ask permission; both require you to play fair.

  5. Track upstream if you want methodology updates. The rubric will go from v4.5 → v4.6 → v5.0 over time. We don't promise backwards compatibility between major versions. If you want the changes, pull them; if you want to pin, pin.

What we won't do to forks

We will not:

Rights that survive any future acquisition

Because the open-source world has been burned by acquisitions that quietly closed previously-open projects, we will state plainly:

Every license granted in this repository before the date of any future acquisition or change of control of the SaaS LLC remains valid in perpetuity under its original terms. The new owner inherits the entity, the trademark, and the right to operate the hosted SaaS — but cannot revoke open licenses already granted, cannot relicense already-published versions, and cannot prevent existing forks from continuing.

Any term in a future Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy that purports to retroactively limit these rights is void as applied to anyone acting in good-faith reliance on the licenses as they existed at the time of their fork.

If a future owner tries to walk this back, the maintainer requests the community fork the methodology to a neutral fiscal sponsor and continue without us. Better the project survive without the brand than the brand survive without the project.

If your fork becomes the canonical one

It's possible — desirable, even — that someone forks DraftGrade and does it better. Different jurisdictions, different practice areas, different community. If that happens:

The mission is access to justice, not perpetuation of a particular brand.

Reporting a license violation or asking for clarification

Acknowledgments

This document was inspired by SQLite's "permissive forever" stance, Plausible Analytics' fork-friendliness, and the painful counterexample of recent open-source license changes that retroactively closed work the community had relied on. We do not want to be a cautionary tale.