Licensing & Intellectual Property

Published: April 11, 2026

This page states the default licensing and intellectual-property terms for YONA-published materials unless specific material is explicitly labeled otherwise.

1. Purpose

YONA publishes specification materials intended to be readable, reusable, and implementable by independent parties.

Different types of YONA-published materials may be licensed under different terms. This page states the default position for:

  • specification text and explanatory content;
  • machine-readable artifacts;
  • software, tools, and reference implementations;
  • names and marks; and
  • patent rights.

As of the published date above, YONA LLC is the current publisher and founder-led steward of YONA releases and companion documents.

2. Specification text and explanatory content

Unless a document explicitly states otherwise, YONA specification text and explanatory content are licensed under:

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

This includes, for example:

  • rulesets;
  • interoperability profiles;
  • test-suite explanatory text;
  • report templates;
  • reference-message writeups;
  • governance pages;
  • legal pages; and
  • similar narrative or explanatory materials published by YONA.

Under CC BY 4.0, you may copy, redistribute, and adapt the text, provided you preserve the applicable license notice, give appropriate attribution, and indicate whether changes were made.

See Attribution for YONA's recommended attribution format.

3. Machine-readable artifacts

YONA-published machine-readable artifacts are licensed under:

Apache License 2.0 (Apache-2.0)

This includes, for example:

  • test vectors;
  • fixtures;
  • .json files;
  • .jws files;
  • expected.json files; and
  • similar machine-readable conformance materials.

If a specific artifact bundle, release, or file is published under different terms, that more specific labeling controls for that material.

4. Software, tools, and reference implementations

If YONA publishes software, tools, scripts, SDKs, CLIs, libraries, or reference implementations, the applicable license will be stated with that repository, package, release, or artifact set.

No default software license should be assumed from this page alone unless the relevant software material is explicitly labeled.

5. Names and marks

CC BY 4.0 and Apache-2.0 do not grant trademark rights.

Nothing on this site grants rights to use any names, logos, or other marks beyond what is permitted under applicable law.

See Naming and Claims Guidelines for recommended wording about factual implementation claims, pilot statements, and conformance claims, and for guidance on what not to imply.

6. Patent rights

Copyright licenses do not, by themselves, grant patent rights.

YONA's royalty-free patent commitment for any Essential Claims it owns or controls is described in YONA Patent Policy.

That patent policy is separate from the copyright and content licenses stated on this page (CC BY 4.0 and Apache-2.0).

7. Disclaimers

YONA materials are provided "AS IS", without warranties or conditions of any kind, and without liability for damages arising from their use.

Implementers and users should review the applicable specification, artifact labeling, repository terms, and legal terms directly, and should obtain legal review where appropriate for production use.

8. Updates and overrides

YONA may update this page over time by publishing an updated version.

If a specific YONA document, artifact bundle, repository, package, or release states different license terms, those more specific terms take precedence for that material.

Unless this page expressly states otherwise, a later update to this page does not retroactively change the license that applied to previously published material.