Legal · trademark policy

Trademark policy

The webdesignhot DESIGN.md catalog is editorial commentary on publicly observable design systems. Every brand name listed in the catalog is a trademark of its respective owner. This page explains how we use those names, how we treat takedown requests, and how trademark holders can reach us.

Our position

Each entry on the catalog (e.g. /design.md/apple, /design.md/stripe, /design.md/stripe) describes a publicly visible design system — colors, typography, spacing, components, motion — extracted from the brand's production marketing site or from openly published documentation.

We use brand names under nominative fair use to identify the system being described. This is the same legal basis under which magazines name brands in articles ("how Apple makes its design system feel premium") and how comparison-shopping sites use brand names in product titles. We do not:

  • Use any brand's logo as our own brand mark.
  • Imply official partnership, sponsorship, or endorsement.
  • Sell access to brand assets that aren't already publicly observable.
  • Reproduce proprietary brand fonts beyond CSS family-name references.

What we do

Each entry is a single Markdown file with YAML frontmatter under our open webdesignhot/0.1 spec. Tokens are derived from observed CSS variables, computed styles, font-family declarations, and visible layout dimensions on the brand's production website. Prose is editorial commentary written by webdesignhot contributors, not copied from the brand's site.

The catalog is open-source under MIT license at github.com/WebDesignHot/design-md. AI coding agents use the entries as a stylistic reference when generating UI; the npx @webdesignhot/design-md add CLI installs an entry as DESIGN.md in the user's repo for the user's agent to read.

Takedown & correction requests

If you are the owner (or authorized representative) of a brand listed in the catalog and you would like an entry removed, corrected, or restricted, please email trademarks@webdesignhot.com with:

  1. The catalog URL of the entry (e.g. https://www.webdesignhot.com/design.md/apple).
  2. Your role / authority to act on behalf of the trademark holder.
  3. The specific concern: removal, factual correction, or scope restriction (e.g. "remove the wordmark color but keep typography").

We commit to a first response within 48 hours (US business hours) and resolution — full removal, modification, or our written reasoning if we decline — within 7 business days. Removal requests from verified trademark holders are honored by default; we err on the side of removal first, ask questions later.

What we won't do

Some requests we'll politely decline:

  • Suppress factual editorial commentary on a publicly visible design system.
  • Hide the brand from search while another brand keeps its entry. We treat all brands consistently.
  • Remove our own derivative work (the prose, the analysis, the lineage commentary) — only the brand name itself is what we'd remove or relabel.

In rare cases where a brand requests removal of a specific element (e.g. a particular hex value that is part of the brand's protected trade dress), we'll work with the trademark holder to find a workable middle ground.

For brand owners considering submission

If you'd prefer to contribute your brand's DESIGN.md directly — making it the canonical, brand-approved source — we welcome pull requests via npx @webdesignhot/design-md submit or directly on github.com/WebDesignHot/design-md. Submitted entries can mark the brand as the official author and override our editorial-extracted version.

Contact

Last updated: 2026-05-08. This policy may be revised; material changes will be linked from this page's history.