BlogBluesky's Patent Non-Aggression Pledge

Bluesky's Patent Non-Aggression Pledge

October 1, 2025

by The Bluesky Team

Bluesky develops open protocols, and we want everybody to feel confident building on them. We have released our software SDKs and reference implementations under Open Source licenses, but those licenses don’t cover everything. To provide additional assurance around patent rights, we are making a non-aggression pledge.

This commitment builds on our recent announcement that we’re taking parts of AT to the IETF in an effort to establish long-term governance for the protocol.

Specifically, we are adopting the short and simple Protocol Labs Patent Non-Aggression Pledge:

Bluesky Social will not enforce any of the patents on any software invention Bluesky Social owns now or in the future, except against a party who files, threatens, or voluntarily participates in a claim for patent infringement against (i) Bluesky Social or (ii) any third party based on that party's use or distribution of technologies created by Bluesky Social.

This pledge is intended to be a legally binding statement. However, we may still enter into license agreements under individually negotiated terms for those who wish to use Bluesky Social technology but cannot or do not wish to rely on this pledge alone.

We are grateful to Protocol Labs for the research and legal review they undertook when developing this pledge text, as part of their permissive intellectual property strategy.

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