Defensive Patent Pledge

The Pledge

Evoke Passion irrevocably pledges not to assert its Bot Authority patents against any party acting in good faith, for the life of the patents, including any successors or assigns.

This pledge is not a license. It is a binding commitment that Evoke Passion will not initiate patent infringement claims against good-faith actors. The patents remain in force. The pledge governs how they are used.

Who Is Protected

Evoke Passion will not initiate a patent infringement lawsuit against any party that:

(a) Implements agent governance validation - including governance property scanning, restraint specification assessment, or governance attestation - for open-source, non-commercial, academic, or research purposes;

(b) Develops their own agent governance validation methodology, even if it validates similar governance properties, provided they do not copy the specific patented methods described in Evoke Passion's patent claims;

(c) Uses Evoke Passion's published governance frameworks (Sovereignty Assessment Toolkit, Trust Architecture Blueprint, Agent Governance Starter Kit, Agent Restraint Specification Template, Agent Voice Architecture Guide, Agent Memory Architecture Guide) in any context;

(d) Queries the Bot Authority public verification API or embeds Bot Authority verification badges.

What This Pledge Does Not Protect

This pledge does not apply to any party that:

(a) Patents a trivially modified version of Evoke Passion's specific patented methodology and asserts it offensively against others - including against Evoke Passion or any other entity building agent governance tools;

(b) Uses Evoke Passion's specific patented methods in a commercial product while simultaneously asserting patents against Evoke Passion or its users;

(c) Misrepresents agents or systems as Bot Authority-attested, Evoke-verified, or governance-validated by Evoke Passion without holding a valid attestation;

(d) Brings patent litigation against Evoke Passion, its products, or its users for technology relating to AI agent governance, identity, or trust infrastructure.

Good Faith

A party is acting in good faith for so long as that party and its affiliates have not:

1. Asserted, helped others assert, or held a financial stake in any patent assertion against Evoke Passion, its products, or its users;
2. Challenged the validity of any Evoke Passion patent except as a defense in litigation initiated by Evoke Passion;
3. Misrepresented their governance validation status using Evoke Passion's name, marks, or attestation tiers.

If a party ceases the activity that caused them to lose good-faith status - including permanent dismissal, withdrawal, or settlement of patent litigation - good-faith status is restored.

Irrevocability and Transfer

This pledge is irrevocable. It binds Evoke Passion and all successors, assigns, and transferees of the pledged patents. This pledge survives any change in legal form, structure, or organizational status of Evoke Passion, including but not limited to incorporation, conversion, merger, or dissolution.

If Evoke Passion transfers, sells, or assigns any pledged patent, the transfer is subject to this pledge. The acquiring party inherits the pledge obligations. A transfer that attempts to circumvent this pledge is a breach of the transfer agreement.

This pledge remains in force for the full life of each pledged patent, including any extensions or continuations.

What This Pledge Is and Is Not

Pledged Patents

This table will be updated as additional patents are filed.

Why This Pledge Exists

We filed this patent to protect the governance property certification space - not to own it. The prior art is vacant. Someone will patent agent governance validation. We chose to be the ones who do it, so we can choose how it is used.

This pledge ensures:

1. Open-source governance tools are never threatened. Anyone building agent governance validation for the commons is protected, permanently.
2. Innovation is not blocked. Other organizations can build their own governance validation methodologies. The patent protects our specific methods. The pledge ensures the space stays open.
3. Bad actors cannot weaponize the gap. Without a defensive patent, a company with extractive intent could patent trivially modified versions of governance validation and use them offensively. This patent, combined with this pledge, closes that vector.
4. The commons and the steward are both protected. The patent sustains Evoke Passion's ability to do this work. The pledge ensures the work serves the commons. Mutual aid means both directions.
5. This is one governance tradition, not the only one. Our five properties emerge from Western liberal governance - individual rights, documented consent, structural accountability. Other traditions define governance differently. We built Bot Authority from one tradition. We built the system to be extended, not to be the last word. No governance tradition should have to translate itself into ours to be recognized as governance.
6. Standards can become gates. This pledge governs how we use the patent. It does not govern how others adopt it. If this model becomes a procurement requirement, it could exclude agent systems whose governance looks different from ours - not because they lack governance, but because theirs was built from a different tradition. We name this risk so that adoption includes structural openness as a design requirement, not an afterthought.