trademark
Is it trademark fair use to use company name/logo on your resume?
<p>I have an online resume website that I created, and I list the logos of companies I've work with over the course of my career. Rather than a dry date list of work experience, I'm just listing the names and logos of the companies on the website. I even have a disclaimer stating this in no way represents endorsement or sponsorship.</p>

<p>I assume this use of the names / logos is considered fair use, an anyone can put a companies name or logo on their resume to state where and who they've work with when talking about their work experience / history. This is exactly what I'm doing here, and what happens when people fill out their LinkedIn profiles too.</p>

<p>Is is considered trademark fair use to use a company logo on your resume?</p>

<p>My website is an online resume / portfolio to use as a digital resume outside of LinkedIn or other places. For reference, it's located here: <a href="http://chrispietschmann.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://chrispietschmann.com</a></p>

<p><strong>No, it's not fair use</strong>. It's also not nominative fair use (the fair use equivalent for trademarks) as another answer suggests.</p>
<p><strong>Why is it not nominative fair use?</strong></p>
<p>There are three conditions for nominative fair use (taken from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia</a>):</p>
<ol>
<li>The product or service cannot be readily identified without using the trademark (e.g. trademark is descriptive of a person, place, or product attribute).</li>
<li>The user only uses as much of the mark as is necessary for the identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol).</li>
<li>The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial, and the same test applies for metatags.</li>
</ol>
<p>The first two conditions really rule out any right to use a company's logo on a resume. Instead, the careful reader will notice that nominative fair use is actually the legal basis for your right to name the companies on your resume at all.</p>
