Scratch Trademark Guidelines

Last updated: September 14, 2026

The Official Scratch Editor is a free and open-source project of the Scratch Foundation, available for free at https://scratch.mit.edu. We want as many people as possible to use Scratch, learn from it, teach with it, and build on it. At the same time, the Scratch Foundation takes our trademark rights very seriously, as the Scratch name and designs signal to millions of kids, families, and educators that they're engaging with a creative, safe, and welcoming environment made or endorsed by the Scratch Foundation. See our Trademarks List for an illustrative list of Scratch’s trademarks (the “Scratch Trademarks”). 

In the event of any conflict or inconsistency between these Guidelines and the Terms of Service regarding use of the Scratch Trademarks, these Guidelines govern as to that use.

Unless we have granted you a specific license, you cannot:

• Use the Scratch Trademarks in the name of your product, app, organization, company, domain, or social account.

• Do anything that suggests the Scratch Foundation is affiliated with, sponsors, or endorses you or your products or services.

• Sell merchandise or other goods bearing the Scratch Trademarks.
• Use the Scratch Trademarks for other commercial purposes, unless the use is a truthful, descriptive reference to the Scratch programming language, the Official Scratch Editor, or the Scratch online community. 

• Modify, alter, or abbreviate the Scratch Trademarks in any way.

• Use the Scratch Trademarks in a way that creates a false or misleading impression that your product integrates with, is built on, or is compatible with Scratch's open-source technology, when that isn’t true.

• Use the Scratch Trademarks in connection with illegal activities or in a derogatory or offensive manner.
  

Partner with us

We're a small nonprofit, and we review trademark requests with a friendly eye, especially from educators and community members. Asking is usually quick and easy. If you're an organization that wants a custom brand or licensing relationship with the Scratch Foundation we're happy to explore that with you. Send us an email and tell us what you have in mind: trademarks@scratch.org.

What you can do without asking us

In short, you can describe, reference, and point to Scratch freely, so long as you do not present your work as an official Scratch product or imply the Scratch Foundation created or endorsed it. We recommend using the following disclaimer:

This [project/product/event/resource] is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Scratch Foundation.

Talk about Scratch. Write about Scratch, recommend it, review it, or describe it. If you'd like a ready-made description, you're welcome to use this one:

Scratch is a coding language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations and share your creations with others around the world. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. Scratch is a project of the Scratch Foundation in collaboration with the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. It is available for free at https://scratch.mit.edu.

Teach or run an event with Scratch. Run a class, club, camp, training, hackathon, event, or workshop that uses Scratch. You can use "Scratch" to reference our product, but not as the name of your event: "A Gentle Introduction to Scratch" or “Learn to animate using Scratch” are fine, but "Scratch Jam" or “Scratch Academy” are not. 

Develop media about Scratch. If you develop learning resources (e.g. tutorials, lesson plans, curriculum) or make videos that show people how to use Scratch, you can say so. For example, "animating sprites with Scratch" or "a lesson pack for Scratch." Use a referential phrase like "for," or "works with," and keep your own name more prominent than ours.

Build something that interacts with Scratch. There is a wide world of Scratch-adjacent software tools and extensions, which we celebrate. If you are building any unofficial software, hardware, or extensions, you can use Scratch to reference our product, but not as the name of your tool. For example, “works with Scratch” is fine, but “ScratchPro” is not. 

Forking and modifying

The Official Scratch Editor is open-source, released under the GNU AGPL v3 license. This license lets you run, study, modify, and share the code as long as you follow its terms: share your source, keep the existing copyright and license notices, mark the files you changed, and keep your version under the same license. If you modify the program and use that modified version to interact with users over a network, you must offer a way to obtain the modified version's full source code. The Scratch Trademarks are owned by the Scratch Foundation. The AGPL does not grant rights to use our trademarks. So even though our open-source license gives you rights to the code, it does not give you rights to the Scratch Trademarks, nor to any claim that you're part of, or endorsed by, the Scratch Foundation.

If you are creating a fork of the Official Scratch Editor, you must:

• Add a short, visible note that you're independent. We recommend:
  • [Your Project] is a fork of the open-source Scratch editor. It is not an official Scratch product, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Scratch Foundation.
• Keep the existing attribution line ("Scratch is developed by the Scratch Foundation…") in the code. This is a credit required by the license, but keeping it doesn't give you permission to call your version "Scratch."

Please don't:

• Name your version "Scratch," "the Scratch editor," or anything that reads as the official version of Scratch. Give your project its own name first; then you can explain that it's built on the open-source Scratch editor.

• Use the Scratch Trademarks as the icon or branding for your version.

• Use the Scratch Trademarks in your app name, company name, domain name, or social media handle.

Here is an example: 

• CORRECT: "Sprite Studio: a coding editor for kids, built on the open-source Scratch editor. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the Scratch Foundation."

• INCORRECT:  "Scratch Editor Plus" using the Scratch Cat as the app icon.

Talking about projects made with Scratch

If you made something in the Official Scratch Editor, you can say it was made with Scratch anywhere you like: in conversation, on your website, in a portfolio, in a video, on a poster. Open-source forks of the Official Scratch Editor still utilize the Scratch programming language, so it’s fine to refer to things made in forks or other editors as being “made with Scratch”. Please also be accurate about the editor that was used. For example, "Made with Scratch using the [Editor Name], based on the open-source Scratch editor" is clear and honest.

Wherever you talk about projects made with Scratch, please don't suggest they're published by, hosted on, or endorsed by the Scratch Foundation when they aren't. Projects made on the Official Scratch Editor are shared in the Scratch community under our Community Guidelines; projects made elsewhere aren't, and it shouldn't look like they are.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you're not sure whether you need permission, email trademarks@scratch.org.

These guidelines are general information, not legal advice, and we may update them from time to time.