These designs are a combined effort of international IT teams such as Calm, IVTA (dhamma.org), Dhamma Reg, and Typo3. They have worked in conjunction with a trademark advisory group, graphic designers and website developers to try to establish various options for a common identity. The artist who created the latest version of the Dhamma Wheel has signed an assignment and licence agreement which enables the tradition to use it in perpetuity.
The trademark phrase “Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S.N. Goenka” was registered by centres in five countries (India, UK, USA, Japan, Australia) with written permission from S.N. Goenka. He also agreed to future registration by authorised centres in more countries, under the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), and there are now more than 80 countries and territories where it is registered. The trademark should preferably be located right at the top of each page of the website.
If the language of the web page is not English, the trademark logo should be displayed in English in the page header on all pages. This is because the trademark is registered only in English in most countries and using a translation would weaken the protection offered by the trademark.
It is recommended that the translation of the trademark (and the tagline if required) is displayed in a simple plain font, either as a heading above the introductory paragraph of text, or as part of the introductory paragraph text. See the example for German.
There is a longstanding use of this phrase on many printed materials and websites for our tradition, due to deep gratitude to Sayagyi. However, there is no written authorisation of this phrase and it is already in legitimate use by other traditions. Including this phrase as part of a trademark complicates the trademark and may actually weaken it or even create an obstacle for the allowance of the trademark in certain countries. Therefore, the main trademark should take a prominent position and the reference to the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin should appear underneath the main trademark, in smaller lettering. In technical jargon, this is called a tagline, and does not compromise the main trademark.