Badge and Mark Usage Terms

1. What these terms cover

These terms govern every display of a Trooth badge, seal, score, tier name, wordmark or logo by anyone other than Trooth, LLC. They apply whether the display is on a website, in a document, in a presentation, in an application, in an email, or in printed material.

They apply in addition to a company's customer agreement. Where a customer agreement and these terms address the same subject, these terms govern the display and the customer agreement governs everything else.

Accepting a badge is accepting these terms. No separate signature is required, and embedding the badge code is acceptance.

2. The principle these terms exist to protect

A Trooth badge asserts something about the moment it is seen. It reports evidence that was witnessed at a stated time and it can stop being true.

Every rule below follows from one requirement: a person looking at a Trooth badge must be seeing the current state, or must be able to tell that they are not. A badge that shows a favourable fact that has since changed is worse for the displaying company than no badge, because it converts a lapsed credential into a false statement made in that company's own voice on that company's own page.

3. The live embed, which is the only fully permitted form

The badge is distributed as an embed that resolves its state at the moment it is rendered. Revocation and score changes propagate to it.

A company displaying the live embed is displaying a current fact and needs to do nothing further. This is the only form of display that carries no additional obligations under these terms.

What is required of the live embed

4. Static images of a badge

A screenshot, an exported image, a printed badge or any other fixed reproduction cannot revoke itself. It is a permanent claim made from a temporary fact.

Static reproduction is permitted only on all four of these conditions:

1. The date is shown. The reproduction carries the date on which the state it shows was witnessed, legibly, adjacent to the badge.
2. It is not presented as current. The reproduction is not accompanied by language asserting that the state is current as of the reader's date.
3. It is not used as a credential in a transaction. A static badge is not supplied in response to a security questionnaire, a procurement request, a diligence request or a tender, in place of the live profile. In those contexts the profile link is supplied instead.
4. It is withdrawn when it becomes wrong. A company that learns its state has changed materially removes or updates the reproduction in materials it controls, within 30 days.

Static reproduction in advertising is not permitted. A paid placement is the one context where a reader has no way to check and the incentive to overstate is highest.

The rule this is really about

A badge in a sales deck, six months after the evidence behind it went stale, is the single most damaging misuse available. It is also the most tempting and the least deliberate. Condition 1 exists so that a reader can always tell what they are looking at, and it is the condition Trooth will enforce first.

5. Tier names, scores and the wordmark

Logo reproduction outside the embed follows the Trooth Logo Usage Guidelines, including the clear-space rule of one mark height on every side and the minimum sizes of 32 pixels digital and half an inch in print.

6. Language that may never accompany a badge

Trooth witnesses and confirms. It does not certify, verify, guarantee, approve, accredit or endorse, and a badge may not be presented as if it did.

Not permitted, in any proximity to a badge or a Trooth mark:

• Certified by Trooth, Trooth verified, Trooth approved, Trooth accredited, Trooth guaranteed, audited by Trooth.
• Any claim that Trooth has audited, assured, insured or underwritten the displaying company.
• Any claim that a badge covers a product, model, feature or subsidiary that the underlying profile does not cover.
• Any comparative claim about another company derived from Trooth data.

Permitted: Witnessed by Trooth, Confirmed by Trooth, Trooth Network member, View our Trooth profile, and the tier name as held.

This distinction is not stylistic. Trooth observes public and connected systems and reports what it observed. It does not perform an audit, and a company that describes it as one is making a claim about a service that was never provided.

7. When a badge must come down

A company removes the badge and every static reproduction it controls, promptly and without notice from Trooth, when any of the following becomes true.

The live embed handles the first three by itself, which is why it is the preferred form. The obligation to remove static reproductions is the company's alone, because Trooth cannot reach them.

8. Revocation

Trooth may suspend or revoke a badge where:

• The badge is displayed in breach of these terms.
• The evidence behind it can no longer be witnessed, for any reason.
• The company obstructs, falsifies or interferes with the observation the badge reports.
• A dispute filed under the network dispute process is settled against the fact the badge asserts.

Before revoking for breach of these terms rather than for absence of evidence, Trooth notifies the company at its profile contact address and allows seven days to correct the display. Revocation for absence of evidence is automatic and immediate, because it is not a sanction: it is the badge reporting the truth.

Revocation of a badge is not a statement that the company failed anything. Where Trooth communicates a revocation publicly, it says which of the four grounds applied.

9. Enforcement

Trooth's remedies for misuse are, in the order they will ordinarily be used:

1. A notice to the profile contact, with the specific display identified and seven days to correct it.
2. Suspension of the badge.
3. Revocation, and where relevant a note on the public profile stating that a badge was revoked for display reasons rather than evidence reasons.
4. Any remedy available at law.

Trooth will not make a public statement about a display issue before step 1 has been completed and the period has run. A company that corrects a display within the notice period has no public record of the matter.

10. Changes to these terms

These terms may change. Where a change adds an obligation on a displaying company, it takes effect 30 days after publication and the current version is always the one published at trooth.co. A company that does not accept a change removes the badge before the change takes effect.

Changes that only clarify an existing obligation, or that relax one, take effect on publication.

11. Questions for counsel at first review

Recorded here so that the first legal conversation about this document starts from a list rather than a blank page. Their presence does not qualify anything above; these terms are in force as written.

1. Whether the acceptance mechanism in section 1, embedding as acceptance, is sufficient to bind a displaying company in the jurisdictions where Trooth operates.
2. Whether section 6's prohibited-language list is better expressed as an exhaustive list, as it is here, or as a general standard with examples.
3. Whether the seven day cure period in section 8 is the right length, and whether it should differ for a display that is merely stale against one that is affirmatively misleading.
4. Whether section 9(3), a public note that a badge was revoked, creates defamation exposure that outweighs its deterrent value, and whether it should be reserved for cases where a company has been notified and has not corrected.
5. Whether the nominative use of a displaying company's own logo elsewhere in the product, and the use of the Trooth mark here, are symmetric enough that the same analysis covers both.