Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier announced the openSUSE project trademark guidelines on his March 2 news page and referred to the three-page PDF containing the details. In the future, only official, unaltered distributions from the openSUSE project can bear the openSUSE trademarks (openSUSE, SUSE, YaST, Gecko or AutoBuild). Any variant or version modified from the official repositories cannot directly use these trademarks and must use their own instead. As the guidelines say:

"In making such a distribution, you must remove all trademark uses of the openSUSE Marks from the version of openSUSE you are modifying, and must use your own trademark instead. You may, if you wish, combine your trademark with one of the following openSUSE Mark tag-lines (or its equivalent): “Based on openSUSE”; “Powered by openSUSE”; “Derived from openSUSE”; “Uses openSUSE”; “Built with SUSEStudio”; “Built on openSUSE”; or “Built from openSUSE”. "

Any modified versions that are not project-based cannot use even the tag-lines above. The guidelines indicate how to remove these entities and refer to a "Making a SUSE based distribution" webpage, with further details in the PDF itself. The guidelines also provide specifics, based on "fair use" principles, on use of logos and tag-lines on T-shirts and other merchandising, linking to the opensuse.org website, advertising and marketing, advocacy groups and events.