- Yes — you can implement the TigerTag protocol in any product, open source or proprietary, for free, forever. See
LICENSING.md. - Yes — you can build and sell commercial products that read or write TigerTag chips.
- Yes — you can say your product is "compatible with TigerTag", including in plain text on the packaging of a compatible reader, printer or piece of software.
- Yes — you can display the TigerTag logo to indicate compatibility, unmodified — in your app, your docs, your store listing.
- No — you cannot put the TigerTag logo or name ("TigerTag", "TigerTag+", "TigerTag+ Certified") on an RFID / NFC chip of any format — chip, inlay, sticker, label, card, key fob, carrier — nor on a spool, a resin bottle or their packaging, without written authorization. There, the mark is a statement of authenticity, not of compatibility.
- No — you cannot name your product or protocol "TigerTag", or use the name commercially as a brand.
- No — you cannot issue TigerTag+ signatures — we hold the private key.
- No — you cannot imply certification, affiliation, or endorsement without written authorization.
- Certification is an audit, and it is a paid service — see
CERTIFICATION.md.
Say what your product does as loudly as you like. Only we say what a TigerTag is.
The licences in LICENSING.md govern the specification, the reference
database, and the sample code — they let you read, quote, translate, implement, copy,
and ship, including commercially, with no royalties and no permission.
The trademark governs the names and the brand — it ensures that a product called "TigerTag", or bearing the TigerTag logo as a mark of authenticity, comes from or is authorized by TigerTag Corp.
You can have full rights to the protocol and still be bound by trademark rules on the name. This is standard practice in open standards and open source (Arduino, OpenWrt, Prusa Research, GS1, Bluetooth SIG).
Note: an earlier version of this file stated that the protocol was available "under the MIT License". That was never accurate and has been removed. The authoritative statement of what is under what licence is
LICENSING.md.
"TigerTag" is a trademark of TigerTag Corp.
Registration status. TigerTag is claimed as an unregistered ("common law") mark and is written TigerTag™, never TigerTag®. No application has been filed at INPI, EUIPO or the USPTO yet; filing is planned (see
docs/TRADEMARK-FILING.md). Do not write "registered" or use the ® symbol anywhere until a registration certificate actually exists — claiming a registration you do not hold is an offence in several jurisdictions, France included, and this document is the one a partner reads before signing.
TigerTag refers to the RFID material-identification protocol, the cloud service
(tigersystem.io), and the official product catalogue.
You may reference "TigerTag" in a factual, descriptive way (e.g. "compatible with TigerTag", "reads TigerTag spools", "implements the TigerTag protocol v2.2") without permission — in prose, in your documentation, and in plain text on the packaging of a product that reads or writes TigerTag chips (see nominative use). The name may never be printed on the chip itself or on a consumable: see Product use.
You may not use "TigerTag" as the name of a competing RFID protocol, cloud service, company, domain, or product brand without explicit written authorization.
"TigerTag+" is a trademark of TigerTag Corp and denotes a tag whose identity carries a product ID from the official catalogue, together with optional enrichment metadata held cloud-side.
The + means identified, not certified. It says the tag is a known catalogue
product, not that anyone has vouched for its origin. A TigerTag+ read in airplane mode
behaves like any other TigerTag: everything needed to print is on the chip, and the
enrichment is an extra, never a dependency. A TigerTag+ carrying no signature is entirely
legitimate.
A TigerTag+ that additionally carries a valid ECDSA-P256 signature is a "TigerTag+ Certified". That signature is written by a manufacturer holding TigerTag+ certification, which is what the signing tools come with. TigerTag Corp holds the private key, so no one else can issue a valid signature — which is the whole reason verification means anything.
You may not describe a tag as "TigerTag+ Certified" unless it carries such a signature: that would be both trademark misuse and a false statement about authenticity. Describing an unsigned catalogue tag as "TigerTag+" is correct and always has been intended to be.
Verifying a signature is free, offline, and unrestricted. The public keys are published in
database/id_version.json and are in the public domain.
The canonical definition of the tier lives on the wiki: https://wiki.tigersystem.io/products/tigertag-plus/. The binary layout of the signature it depends on is specified here.
There are two different uses of the logo, and only one of them is free.
The distinction is the same one Zigbee draws between "Zigbee Compatible" and "Zigbee Certified": saying your product talks to TigerTag is a factual statement about your product. Putting our mark on a chip, a spool, or its packaging is a statement about origin and authenticity — and a buyer reads it as a guarantee.
You may use the TigerTag logo, unmodified, to indicate compatibility:
- inside your application's UI,
- in your documentation, README, or store listing,
- in marketing that describes what your product works with.
Conditions:
- Your product name must be clearly distinct from "TigerTag".
- The logo must remain unmodified — no recolouring, stretching, or recomposition.
- It must appear as a compatibility statement, never as a seal or a badge of quality.
- You must not imply affiliation, certification, or endorsement.
- You must respect the visual guidelines in
brand/.
A product that reads or writes TigerTag chips — a reader, a printer, a scale, a slicer, an app — may say so in plain text on its own packaging, product page and manual, without permission. This is the descriptive (nominative) use that trademark law tolerates:
- plain text only, e.g. "Compatible with TigerTag" or "Reads TigerTag tags" — not the logo, not a stylised lettering, not a badge or seal;
- no more prominent than the surrounding text, and never more prominent than your own brand;
- only the words needed to state the fact — no "official", "certified", "approved" or "partner" unless you hold that status;
- never on the chip, nor on a consumable (filament, resin, spool, bottle, refill) or its packaging — there the words say "this is a TigerTag", which is Product use below.
You may not, without a written trademark licence from TigerTag Corp:
- print, emboss, engrave, laser-mark, encode as artwork or otherwise reproduce the TigerTag logo or name — "TigerTag", "TigerTag+", "TigerTag+ Certified", or any variant, abbreviation or translation of them — on an RFID / NFC chip of any format: bare chip, inlay (wet or dry), sticker, label, card, key fob, coin, carrier or any other tag housing;
- reproduce that logo or name on a spool, a resin bottle, a refill, or their packaging;
- use the TigerTag name commercially as a brand or product designation;
- present the logo or name as a mark of authenticity, certification, quality, or partnership.
This covers the visible surface of the tag. What the chip's memory carries is the protocol itself: writing TigerTag data, including a TigerTag+ product id, is free and always will be.
Also prohibited, certified or not:
- using the mark, or a modified, abbreviated or combined form of it, in a product name, a company name, a domain or subdomain name, or a social-media handle ("@TigerTagShop", "tigertag.example.com", "TigerTagPro");
- describing a finished product as certified because it contains a certified component — a
TigerTag Compliant Platform (see
CERTIFICATION.md); - using the mark on a product line that is not listed in the certified registry.
The trademark licence granted with certification is limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable: it covers the listed product lines only and ends when the certification does.
Applied to a product, the mark no longer says "this works with TigerTag". It says "this is a TigerTag" — an assertion about who made it and whether it can be trusted. That assertion is ours to make, and only ours.
Authorization is granted through certification: an audit of your product and your process,
followed by a trademark licence. It is a paid service. See CERTIFICATION.md.
On products, TigerTag follows the rules the Connectivity Standards Alliance applies to Zigbee and Matter:
- the mark on a product, a chip or its packaging requires certification;
- a certified product must display the mark, and is listed in a public registry;
- certified components are Compliant Platforms, and do not certify the product they go into;
- the mark never goes into a product name, a domain, a subdomain or a social handle, and is never modified;
- the licence is limited and revocable.
One difference is deliberate. Matter is reserved to Alliance members; the TigerTag protocol is
open to everyone (LICENSING.md). So the referential tier stays free for
anyone, member or not: saying "compatible with TigerTag" and showing the logo in an app,
documentation or a store listing. An open standard that charged for the right to say you
implement it would not be open.
Trademark law exists to protect the buyer, not the brand: it prevents confusion about who made a product and whether it meets the standard it claims. A consumer who sees our logo on a spool must be able to conclude, without checking anything, that the chip is genuine, correctly written, and will behave as the specification promises.
That guarantee is only worth something if we verify the integrations behind it. So certification is not paperwork — it is what makes the promise true. It is also a legal necessity: a trademark owner who licenses a mark without exercising quality control over licensees risks losing the mark altogether.
The protocol stays free. The promise stays ours to keep.
The contents of brand/ are all rights reserved and are not covered by the licences
in LICENSING.md. The referential permission above is a limited, revocable permission to use
the logo descriptively; it is not a copyright licence to the artwork.
| Action | Allowed? |
|---|---|
| Read, quote, and translate the specification | Yes (CC-BY-4.0) |
| Implement the protocol in a closed-source product | Yes (irrevocable grant) |
| Ship a commercial printer, slicer, or reader that speaks TigerTag | Yes |
| Copy the sample code into your firmware | Yes (Apache-2.0) |
Embed database/*.json in your product |
Yes (CC0, no attribution needed) |
| Verify a TigerTag+ signature offline | Yes |
| Write TigerTag data — including a TigerTag+ product id — into a chip's memory | Yes |
| Say "compatible with TigerTag", including on a commercial product | Yes |
| Write "Compatible with TigerTag" in plain text on the packaging of a compatible reader, printer or software | Yes — nominative use, no logo |
| Display the unmodified logo in your app, docs or store listing to show compatibility | Yes |
| Describe your tag's data as "TigerTag+" (a catalogue product id) in your app, docs or listing | Yes |
| Propose a change to the protocol | Encouraged — see CONTRIBUTING.md |
| Put the TigerTag logo or name on an RFID / NFC chip of any format (chip, inlay, sticker, label, card, key fob, carrier) | No — written authorization + certification |
| Put the TigerTag logo or name on a spool, bottle, refill or their packaging | No — written authorization + certification |
| Use the TigerTag name commercially as a brand or product designation | No (trademark) |
| Present the logo or name as a seal of authenticity, quality or partnership | No — written authorization + certification |
| Name your app or protocol "TigerTag" | No (trademark) |
| Name your company or domain "TigerTag" | No (trademark) |
| Use "TigerTag" in a subdomain or a social-media handle | No (trademark) |
| Call a finished product certified because it contains a certified chip, inlay or module | No — the product needs its own certification |
| Create a competing RFID protocol called "TigerTag" | No (trademark) |
| Issue or forge a TigerTag+ signature | No (key custody) |
| Describe a tag as "TigerTag+ Certified" without a valid signature | No (trademark + misrepresentation) |
| Claim TigerTag certification without agreement | No — see LICENSE_COMMERCIAL.md |
Three words, and only one of them needs us:
- Official — made by TigerSystem. A statement of origin, not a mark that gets granted.
- Certified — made by a third party, audited and validated by TigerSystem. Open to anything a third party builds, hardware or software alike: the line is whether anyone checked, not what the product is.
- Compatible — made by a third party, self-declared. Free, unaudited, no permission needed, and staying that way.
Certification comes in two scopes, TigerTag Certified and TigerTag+ Certified, the
second covering verified handling of signed tags. Who may claim what, what the audit
verifies, and what each mark costs are defined in
CERTIFICATION.md — that is where those facts live, and they are not
restated here.
If you manufacture filament or resin and want officially supplied TigerTag media (pre-printed carriers), TigerTag+ signatures, product-ID allocation, the right to put the TigerTag logo or name on your chips, your product or its packaging, or certified partner status, you need certification.
Certification is an audit — of your product and of your process — followed by a trademark
licence. It is a paid service, on the model the Connectivity Standards Alliance uses for Zigbee
and Matter. The process, what the audit verifies, surveillance and revocation are all described
in CERTIFICATION.md. The agreement itself is
LICENSE_COMMERCIAL.md.
Certified partners are listed publicly. That registry is the only authoritative way for a buyer to check whether a logo on a spool is legitimate.
None of it is required to implement the protocol. Implement it freely, sell freely, say "compatible with TigerTag" freely. Certification is required only to make the promise — to put our mark on your product and tell a buyer it is genuine.
Open an issue, or reach us on Discord. For trademark authorization requests: tigertag@tigertag.io.
© 2025–2026 TigerTag Corp.