Press Guidance

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is most pleased that you want to mention the organization, its work or its specifications in your press release or article. The material below is intended to help you do that easily and accurately. We encourage you to allow us to review your piece before publication. You can send it to pr.review@opengeospatial.org and we'll do our best to get it back to you within 24 hours.

Open Geospatial Consortium Inc.

OGC recently changed its name, be sure to refer to the organization as the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. And, be sure to define the acronym before using OGC in the rest of a document. (See the first sentence of this document.)

Specification Names

Each specification has a full name, for example, the OpenGIS® Web Map Service Implementation Specification. While the name of the organization is no longer Open GIS, the specifications are still OpenGIS specifications. Use the "®" symbol after the first use of OpenGIS in a document. It's a registered trademark.

Be sure to check the name of the specification, as some have changed: The OpenGIS Web Map Service Implementation Specification was once the Web Mapping Service Specification. In doubt? Check here.

Describing a Product as Compliant

You may only refer to a software product as compliant to a specification if it has been tested and achieved that status. Once that process is complete, the product is listed here as compliant. It's not correct to say that a product is simply compliant - you must indicate to which specification. "This product is compliant with the OpenGIS® Simple Features Implementation Specification for SQL."

If you want to refer to a product that implements a specification, but has not been tested, you may say that the product implements one or more specifications: "Product X implements the OpenGIS® Web Map Service Implementation Specification."

Further details on use of trademarks is available here.

What is OGC?

We use this paragraph to describe OGC and what it does. You are welcome to use it in your articles and press releases.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 340 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.   

NOTE: For the latest number of OGC Members, please see About OGC.

Use of OGC Logo in Articles, Press Releases

Members of the press are granted permission to use the logos only in conjunction with stories relating to the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.. Compliance and membership logos can only used by on products and by organizations with appropriate credentials.

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