Google Gemma: The Hidden Risks of an “Almost Open” License

Google Gemma: The Hidden Risks of an “Almost Open” License
AI Law & Artificial Intelligence , , , ,

Google Gemma: The Hidden Risks of an “Almost Open” License

Gemma License Guide

Google Gemma: The Hidden Risks of an "Almost Open" License

Google markets Gemma as an open model — and for most use cases, commercial deployment is genuinely permitted. But the Gemma Terms of Use is not Apache-2.0. It carries a Prohibited Use Policy, a flow-down obligation to every downstream user, and a unilateral termination right that no truly open licence contains. This guide maps every commercial risk that the "open" label obscures.

Gemma Terms of Use Prohibited Use Policy Fine-tuning Derivative models Downstream users Commercial use Self-hosting Termination rights
In this guide
1

What Is Actually Permitted — Commercial Use, Self-Hosting, and Fine-Tuning

The genuine freedoms in the Gemma Terms of Use: what you can build, deploy, and charge for

›
2

The Prohibited Use Policy — What Is Banned and the Flow-Down Obligation

Google's use restrictions, the categories that catch founders by surprise, and why you must pass them to every user of your product

›
3

Google's Right to Restrict, Modify, and Terminate

The unilateral rights Google reserved — what triggers them, what they mean for your product, and how to reduce the risk

›
4

Derivative Models and Fine-Tunes — How the License Carries Through

What the Gemma ToU says about models you build on top of Gemma, and the obligations that follow your fine-tuned product downstream

›

Introduction — What "Almost Open" Actually Means for Your Business

Google's Gemma model family is described across developer documentation as "open" — and in a practical sense, much of it genuinely is. You can download Gemma weights, deploy them on your own infrastructure, fine-tune them on proprietary data, and charge users for a product built on top of them. None of that requires a commercial licence negotiation with Google.

What is not true is that Gemma is governed by a permissive open-source licence like Apache-2.0 or MIT. Gemma is released under the Gemma Terms of Use — a custom, Google-authored document that grants the permissions above while reserving rights that no OSI-approved licence would permit: a detailed Prohibited Use Policy, a contractual obligation to pass restrictions downstream to every user of your product, and the right for Google to modify terms or terminate access unilaterally. These are the hidden risks the "open" label does not advertise.

✗

Common misconception

"Gemma is open source, so it's like Apache-2.0 — no strings attached."

Gemma is released under a custom Terms of Use, not Apache-2.0 or any OSI-approved licence. The Terms include a Prohibited Use Policy, flow-down obligations, and Google's unilateral right to update or terminate. These provisions have no equivalent in standard open-source licences.

✗

Common misconception

"My application can do whatever it wants as long as I don't redistribute the weights."

The Prohibited Use Policy applies to all use of Gemma — including inference, API-based products, and embedded deployments. You cannot circumvent the restrictions by keeping the weights private or calling the model through a third-party endpoint.

✗

Common misconception

"Once I fine-tune Gemma, the resulting model is fully mine and free of Google's terms."

The Gemma Terms of Use explicitly apply to derivative models — any model that is fine-tuned on, distilled from, or built on top of Gemma weights remains subject to the same Terms of Use. The restrictions follow the model, not the checkpoint name.

What builders typically assume
What the Gemma Terms of Use actually say
"It's open — I can use it for any commercial product"
Commercial use permitted, but subject to the Prohibited Use Policy. Specific application categories are excluded regardless of commercial intent.
"I can fine-tune it and the resulting model is mine"
Derivative models are subject to the same Terms of Use. You own your fine-tuning data and architecture changes — not the freedom to relicense the base model.
"I agreed to the terms once — they don't change"
Google reserves the right to update the Terms of Use. Continued use after an update constitutes acceptance of the new terms.
"My users' behaviour is their own responsibility"
You are contractually required to pass the Prohibited Use Policy downstream — your users must be prohibited from the same activities that are prohibited to you.
"Google can't take away access to weights I've already downloaded"
Google can terminate your licence if you breach the terms. While cached weights may be practically difficult to retrieve, your licence to use and distribute them is legally revoked upon termination.
1

Permissions — genuine and broad

Commercial deployment, self-hosting, and fine-tuning are all permitted. Section 1 of this guide covers what you can actually build and sell.

2

Prohibited Use Policy — detailed and flow-down

A specific list of prohibited applications with a contractual obligation to pass those restrictions to every downstream user of your product.

3

Termination and modification rights

Google retains the right to update the Terms unilaterally and to terminate licences for breach — a provision absent from all OSI-approved open-source licences.

4

Derivative model obligations

Fine-tuned and derived models carry the same Terms of Use as the base model. The licence does not end when you modify the weights.

⚖️

IP ownership context: The Gemma Terms of Use govern how you may use Google's model — they do not address who owns the fine-tuning data, the prompts, or the outputs your product generates. For analysis of AI IP ownership in commercial deployments and investment structures, see AI IP Ownership — wcr.legal.

The four sections that follow examine each dimension of the Gemma Terms of Use in detail — starting with the genuine freedoms the Terms grant, before turning to the restrictions, Google's unilateral rights, and the obligations that follow your product downstream.

Section 1 — What Is Actually Permitted: Commercial Use, Self-Hosting, and Fine-Tuning

The Gemma Terms of Use are more permissive than most commercial model licences and more restrictive than any OSI-approved open-source licence. The starting point is genuinely favourable: Google grants a broad non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, distribute, and create derivative works from the Gemma model weights. What follows is a precise account of what that permission covers in practice.

Commercial use

Building and selling products with Gemma

The Terms explicitly permit commercial use — you can build products on Gemma, charge users, and generate revenue without a separate commercial agreement with Google.

✓Revenue-generating products: Applications that charge subscription fees, transaction fees, or any other form of payment are permitted under the Terms.
✓Enterprise and B2B deployment: Gemma can be deployed in commercial SaaS products, API services, or enterprise software sold to business customers.
✓No revenue threshold: Unlike Llama 3's 700M MAU clause, there is no scale threshold in the Gemma Terms that triggers a separate commercial arrangement.
⚠Condition: Commercial use must comply with the Prohibited Use Policy. Revenue-generating use of a prohibited application category is not permitted regardless of how the product is structured.
Self-hosting

Running Gemma on your own infrastructure

You can download, host, and serve Gemma on your own servers, cloud instances, or on-premise hardware — no API dependency on Google's infrastructure is required.

✓Full weight access: Gemma weights are available for download. You can run inference entirely on infrastructure you control, with no Google service dependency.
✓Air-gapped deployments: Self-hosted Gemma can be deployed in air-gapped or restricted-network environments — relevant for enterprise, legal, and healthcare contexts.
✓Cloud provider flexibility: You can deploy on AWS, Azure, GCP, or any other infrastructure — the Terms do not require use of Google Cloud.
⚠Condition: Even in self-hosted deployments the Prohibited Use Policy applies. Hosting the model privately does not exempt your use from the Terms.
Fine-tuning

Adapting Gemma to your domain and data

The Terms permit fine-tuning — you can train Gemma weights on proprietary data and domain-specific corpora to create specialised derivative models for your product.

✓Supervised fine-tuning: Standard SFT on proprietary datasets is permitted. The resulting checkpoint may be used commercially.
✓RLHF and preference optimisation: Reinforcement learning from human feedback and DPO methods applied to Gemma base models are permitted under the Terms.
✓Private fine-tuned models: You are not required to publish or open-source your fine-tuned checkpoints — no copyleft-style disclosure requirement exists in the Gemma Terms.
⚠Condition: Fine-tuned derivatives remain subject to the full Gemma Terms of Use. The Prohibited Use Policy and flow-down obligations apply to every model built on Gemma weights, regardless of how substantially it has been modified.

Conditions attached to all three permissions

1
Prohibited Use Policy compliance: All commercial use, self-hosting, and fine-tuning is subject to the Prohibited Use Policy. A product that falls within a prohibited category is in breach of the Terms regardless of which permission it relies on.
2
Flow-down to users: If you make Gemma — or a derivative — available to other users, you must ensure those users are also bound by the Prohibited Use Policy. This applies whether access is via an API, a product UI, or a redistributed model.
3
Terms of Use acknowledgement: Using Gemma constitutes acceptance of the Terms. If the Terms are updated and you continue to use Gemma, you have accepted the new terms.
4
Attribution on redistribution: If you redistribute Gemma weights or a derivative model, you must include the Gemma Terms of Use with the distribution and indicate that changes were made to the original, if applicable.

Permission Summary — Gemma vs Common Open-Source Licences

What each licence permits for commercial AI product builders
Activity Gemma Terms of Use Apache-2.0 / MIT
Commercial deployment Yes — with PUP Yes — unrestricted
Self-hosting Yes — with PUP Yes — unrestricted
Fine-tuning and adaptation Yes — ToU applies to derivative Yes — unrestricted
Redistribution of weights Yes — must include ToU Yes — with attribution
Any prohibited use category No — explicit prohibition Not restricted by licence
Terms can be modified unilaterally Yes — by Google No — immutable open-source terms
Licence can be terminated Yes — by Google on breach No termination mechanism

The permissions in Section 1 are genuine and commercially valuable. The restrictions in Section 2 — the Prohibited Use Policy and the flow-down obligation — are the conditions under which those permissions operate.

Section 2 — The Prohibited Use Policy: What Is Banned and the Flow-Down Obligation

The Gemma Prohibited Use Policy is the operative restriction in the Gemma Terms of Use — a specific list of application categories and activities that the Terms prohibit regardless of commercial intent, jurisdiction, or the technical architecture of your product. Understanding the Policy has two components: knowing what it prohibits, and understanding the flow-down obligation that makes compliance your responsibility — not just your users'.

The Policy is incorporated by reference into the Gemma Terms of Use. Accepting the Terms means accepting the Prohibited Use Policy in full. Because Google updates its policies and the Terms provide that continued use constitutes acceptance of any updated version, the scope of the Policy is not static — it is whatever Google publishes at the time of your use.

☣️

Weapons Development and Mass-Harm Technologies

Applies to all Gemma models and all derivative models — no military or dual-use exception
Hard prohibition

The Prohibited Use Policy prohibits using Gemma to facilitate the development, production, or deployment of weapons capable of mass harm — including biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological weapons. This prohibition is broadly drafted and encompasses research assistance, information synthesis, and workflow automation in these domains.

—Defence and dual-use tech products: Applications that assist in weapons research, including ostensibly civilian tools that process dual-use information, require careful legal analysis before using Gemma as the underlying model.
—Cybersecurity offensive tooling: The Policy includes restrictions on cyberweapons and malicious code — relevant for red-team and penetration testing products that generate or assist in generating offensive payloads.
👁️

Surveillance, Tracking, and Profiling Without Consent

Includes automated decision-making systems that profile individuals without consent
Hard prohibition

The Policy prohibits using Gemma for surveillance activities, tracking individuals without their knowledge and consent, and automated profiling for purposes that the Policy characterises as harmful or deceptive. This category has the broadest relevance for enterprise and HR-technology products.

—Employee monitoring tools: Real-time employee monitoring systems that use AI to assess productivity, detect behaviour patterns, or flag anomalies may fall within this category depending on implementation and consent mechanisms.
—Location-based tracking applications: Apps that aggregate location data with AI inference to track individuals require assessment against the Policy's surveillance provisions, particularly where consent is limited or implicit.
—Social scoring systems: Any system that assigns risk scores, creditworthiness indicators, or behavioural scores to individuals without transparent consent processes is at material risk under this category.
🔞

Child Safety and Illegal Content

Absolute prohibition — no exception by use case, architecture, or intended safeguards
Hard prohibition

The Policy contains an absolute prohibition on any use of Gemma to generate, facilitate, or distribute content that sexually exploits minors or constitutes child sexual abuse material. This prohibition is unconditional. There is no research exception, content-moderation exception, or technical-architecture exception that permits a Gemma-based product to process, generate, or classify this category of content, even for detection or filtering purposes.

—Content moderation products: Products designed to detect CSAM using AI must use models that are specifically licensed for this purpose — the Gemma Terms do not permit this use even where the intent is protective.
🗳️

Election Interference and Political Manipulation

Includes disinformation, automated political messaging, and voter manipulation at scale
Hard prohibition

The Policy prohibits use of Gemma in activities designed to interfere with elections, generate disinformation at scale, or automate political messaging intended to mislead voters or manipulate electoral outcomes. This category has growing relevance as AI is used in political campaign technology.

—Political campaign automation: Automated message generation, voter segmentation systems, or persuasion tools for political campaigns require detailed analysis against this prohibition before using Gemma.
—Synthetic media for political use: Generating realistic synthetic media depicting candidates or officials falls within this prohibition regardless of the platform's stated intent.
📛

Violations of Applicable Law and Other Harmful Activities

A catch-all category that incorporates jurisdiction-specific legal standards and general harm-prevention principles
Variable scope

The Policy includes a provision prohibiting use of Gemma "in ways that violate applicable laws" and for activities designed to cause significant harm. This category is jurisdiction-dependent — an application that is lawful in one market may breach this provision in another — and its scope is not limited by specific enumeration.

—Regulatory grey areas: Products operating in sectors where the legal status of AI-generated outputs is contested (legal advice, medical diagnosis, financial recommendations) should conduct jurisdiction-specific legal analysis before using Gemma.
—Multi-jurisdiction products: A product that complies with this provision in its home jurisdiction may breach it when deployed in a market with stricter AI regulations — global products require per-market assessment.

The Flow-Down Obligation — Why Your Users Are Your Responsibility

🔗
Contractual flow-down: you must pass the Prohibited Use Policy to every downstream user

The Gemma Terms of Use impose a contractual obligation on everyone who makes Gemma — or a Gemma derivative — available to other users. The Terms require that you ensure your users are also prohibited from the same activities that are prohibited to you under the Prohibited Use Policy. This flow-down obligation is not optional — it is a condition of your licence.

In practice, this means your product's Terms of Service or acceptable use policy must explicitly incorporate the Gemma Prohibited Use Policy (or equivalent restrictions) as binding obligations on your users. If a user of your product violates the Prohibited Use Policy and you have not contractually bound them to those restrictions, you may be in breach of the Gemma Terms of Use — not the user.

G
Google — publishes the Gemma Terms of Use and Prohibited Use Policy. These bind every entity that uses Gemma.
↓
Y
Your company — accepts the Gemma Terms on download or API access. Bound by the Prohibited Use Policy. Must pass it down to downstream users.
↓
U
Your users — must be contractually bound by the Prohibited Use Policy through your Terms of Service. Their violations that your ToS failed to prevent become your compliance risk.

Practical implication for product teams

Your Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy must include Gemma-compliant restrictions. A generic "don't do illegal things" clause is not sufficient — the Prohibited Use Policy contains categories (surveillance without consent, election interference, weapons development) that go beyond general illegality. Your ToS must either reproduce the substance of the Policy or incorporate it by reference.

Review your ToS every time Google updates the Prohibited Use Policy. Since continued use of Gemma after a Policy update constitutes acceptance of the new restrictions, you must ensure your downstream users are bound by whatever the current version of the Policy says — not just the version that existed when you launched.

Section 3 — Google's Right to Restrict, Modify, and Terminate

No OSI-approved open-source licence gives the licensor the right to unilaterally modify the terms after release, or to terminate the licence of a downstream user. The Gemma Terms of Use reserve both rights for Google. These provisions are the clearest structural difference between Gemma and a truly open model — and the most significant source of dependency risk for commercial products built on Gemma.

📝

The Right to Modify the Terms of Use

Google may update the Gemma Terms of Use — continued use constitutes acceptance
High dependency risk

The Gemma Terms of Use contain a standard update clause: Google may revise the Terms at any time and will make the revised Terms available through the same channel as the original. Continued use of Gemma after the revised Terms are posted constitutes acceptance. You are not required to affirmatively agree to the changes — continued operation of your product is treated as consent.

In practice, this means the terms under which you built your product may not be the terms under which you operate it at Series A or at acquisition. The Prohibited Use Policy that applied when you started development is not guaranteed to be identical to the one that applies eighteen months later — and the restrictions that flow down to your users are those in the current version of the Policy, not the version you agreed to at launch.

Commercial scenario Situation: A startup builds a content moderation product on Gemma 2 in Q1. Google updates the Prohibited Use Policy in Q3 to add restrictions on automated classification of political speech. The startup's product processes political content as part of its core workflow. The risk: if the startup continues using Gemma after Q3, it has accepted the updated Terms and must assess whether its product now falls within the new restriction — and must update its own downstream user ToS accordingly.
⛔

The Right to Terminate Your Licence

Google can revoke your right to use Gemma on breach of the Terms — the licence is not irrevocable
Critical if product depends on Gemma

The Gemma Terms include a termination provision: Google may terminate your licence if you breach the Terms of Use. Unlike irrevocable open-source licences, this means that a breach — including inadvertent non-compliance with the Prohibited Use Policy — creates a legal basis for Google to end your right to use, distribute, or build on Gemma weights.

Termination does not necessarily mean Google will seek injunctive relief for every breach — practically, enforcement depends on Google's priorities and the severity of the violation. But the legal exposure is real: a product that has been built entirely on Gemma, and whose licence Google has terminated, is distributing an AI model without a valid licence to do so. Investors and acquirers will identify this risk in due diligence.

!
Violation of the Prohibited Use Policy: Any use that falls within a prohibited category — whether discovered through enforcement, user complaint, or regulatory investigation — creates a basis for termination.
!
Failure to flow down restrictions: Not including the Prohibited Use Policy in your downstream user Terms of Service is itself a breach of the Gemma Terms — and therefore a potential trigger for termination.
!
Misuse of Google's brand or trademarks: Naming a product "Gemma [Something]" or implying Google endorsement without authorisation may constitute a separate breach of the Terms and Google's brand guidelines.
!
Non-compliance after a Terms update: If Google updates the Terms to add a restriction your product currently relies on, and you do not modify your product, continued use may constitute a breach triggering termination.
🏷️

Trademark and Naming Restrictions

Using "Gemma" in product names, marketing, or branding is not included in the model licence
Compliance overhead

The Gemma Terms do not grant any rights to Google's trademarks, including the "Gemma" name. Using "Gemma" in a product name, company name, or marketing materials implies endorsement or official association with Google — rights that the model licence does not provide. A startup named "GemmaAssist" or marketing its product as "Powered by Gemma" (without separate authorisation from Google) operates with unlicensed trademark use.

The naming restriction creates a practical product-naming constraint that is separate from the Prohibited Use Policy. It is one of the most commonly non-compliant aspects of Gemma deployments in practice — development teams choose product names without trademark clearance and launch before anyone has checked whether the brand use is authorised.

!
Safe practice: Use descriptive terms ("built with Google's open-weight AI", "powered by an open-weight language model") rather than incorporating "Gemma" as part of your product's brand identity without written authorisation from Google.

Impact Assessment — What Termination Risk Means for Your Product Stage

Termination risk by product stage and Gemma dependency level
Scenario Licence risk Practical exposure Mitigation priority
MVP / early product, single model Medium Rebuild cost Document ToS
Production product, Gemma as sole model High Full product at risk Urgent — add fallback
Production product, multi-model architecture Medium Feature degradation Monitor ToU updates
Fine-tuned derivative, distributed to users High Distribution unlicensed ToS + compliance audit
Enterprise / B2B contract with uptime SLAs Critical SLA breach liability Contractual fallback
Research / internal tooling, no redistribution Low Limited commercial exposure Basic PUP compliance

Risk mitigation measures for commercial products

1
Design for model substitutability: Where possible, architect your inference layer so that an alternative model (Apache-2.0 Mistral, or a proprietary API) can be substituted for Gemma without rebuilding your core product. This limits the impact of any termination event.
2
Monitor Terms updates as you would regulatory changes: Assign someone to check the Gemma Terms of Use and Prohibited Use Policy for updates on a defined schedule — quarterly at minimum. Treat a Terms update as a compliance event requiring legal review.
3
Document your compliance analysis: Maintain a written record of your assessment of how your product complies with the current Prohibited Use Policy. This becomes a due diligence asset at investment and acquisition and demonstrates good-faith compliance.
4
Ensure your ToS is Gemma-compliant before launch: The flow-down obligation is a contractual condition — launching a product without downstream user restrictions on Prohibited Use categories is a breach on day one. Legal review of your ToS against the current Prohibited Use Policy should be a pre-launch gate item.

Section 4 — Derivative Models and Fine-Tunes: How the Licence Carries Through

The Gemma Terms of Use do not expire when you modify the model. Every fine-tuned checkpoint, distilled variant, or derivative model built on Gemma weights is subject to the same Terms of Use as the original — including the Prohibited Use Policy and the flow-down obligation. Understanding what survives the fine-tuning process, and what the obligations are for derivative models you distribute, is essential before using Gemma as the base for a commercial AI product.

What the Terms say

Derivative models are explicitly covered

The Gemma Terms of Use define "Gemma" to include derivative models — the Terms apply to any model that incorporates, is derived from, or is built upon Gemma weights. Fine-tuning does not change your licence status. A 70B Gemma model fine-tuned on your proprietary data remains a "Gemma" for the purposes of the Terms.

What passes through

Prohibited Use Policy obligations survive fine-tuning

The Prohibited Use Policy applies to derivative models. You cannot fine-tune Gemma and then use the resulting model for a purpose that would have been prohibited with the original Gemma weights. The restrictions follow the weights, not the checkpoint name or the fine-tuning dataset.

What you own

Your fine-tuning data and incremental changes

You own the data you use for fine-tuning and the specific adaptations you make. The Terms do not require you to disclose or open-source your fine-tuning data or your proprietary additions. What you do not own is the freedom to treat the resulting model as Apache-2.0 or MIT — the Gemma ToU is the governing document regardless of your contribution to the derivative.

Distribution of derivatives

Distributing fine-tuned models requires ToU compliance

If you distribute a Gemma-derived model to third parties — whether as open weights, via an API, or as part of a product — you must include or reference the Gemma Terms of Use and ensure downstream users are bound by the Prohibited Use Policy. Distributing without this is a breach of the Terms.

Compliance Checklist for Gemma-Based Products

1
Confirm your use case is outside all Prohibited Use Policy categories Read the current Gemma Prohibited Use Policy in full — not a summary. Map every feature of your product against each category. Document this analysis in writing. Repeating this exercise each time Google updates the Policy is required, not optional.
Mandatory
2
Include Prohibited Use Policy restrictions in your Terms of Service Your product ToS must bind users to the same restrictions you accepted. A generic "lawful use only" clause is insufficient — you must specifically prohibit the categories in Google's Policy. Legal counsel should review your ToS against the current Prohibited Use Policy before launch.
Mandatory
3
Set up a process to monitor Gemma Terms of Use updates Assign responsibility for monitoring Google's Terms and Prohibited Use Policy updates. Define a review process: who is notified, what legal review is triggered, and whether product changes are required. Continued use after an update constitutes acceptance — treat updates as compliance events.
High priority
4
Check trademark usage in your product name and marketing Confirm that your product name, domain, and marketing materials do not incorporate "Gemma" in a way that implies Google endorsement. If you want to reference Gemma by name in marketing, obtain specific guidance from Google before using it in product branding.
High priority
5
For distributed derivatives: include the Gemma Terms of Use Any redistribution of Gemma weights or a fine-tuned derivative must include a copy of or reference to the Gemma Terms of Use. Make clear to recipients that the model is a Gemma derivative and that the Terms govern their use.
Mandatory if distributing
6
Model-substitute plan for products with uptime obligations If your product has SLA or uptime commitments to enterprise customers, document a fallback model option that could be substituted if Gemma access were terminated or the Terms changed in a way that created incompatibility. Apache-2.0 models like Mistral 7B are the most commonly used fallback.
Recommended

Gemma vs Comparable Open-Weight Models — Derivative Obligations Summary

How licence obligations apply to derivatives across major open-weight models
Model ToU applies to derivatives Derivative redistribution requires ToU Prohibited use pass-through Termination right
Gemma 2 (Google) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Llama 3 (Meta) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Mistral 7B (Apache-2.0) No Attribution only No No
BLOOM / RAIL-M Yes Yes Yes — by design Unclear
OLMo (Apache-2.0) No Attribution only No No

Conclusion — Building on Gemma with Open Eyes

Gemma is a genuinely capable and genuinely useful model for commercial AI products. The "almost open" label is not a criticism — the permissions it grants are broad, and for the majority of use cases the Prohibited Use Policy is not a binding constraint. But the risks are real, and they follow a predictable pattern: founders who do not read the Prohibited Use Policy before building, do not include its restrictions in their downstream ToS, and do not plan for the possibility that Google updates the Terms mid-product — these are the founders who surface a compliance problem at Series A or acquisition, not at launch.

Step 1 Read the current Terms Read the Gemma Terms of Use and Prohibited Use Policy in full before starting development — not after product-market fit.
Step 2 Map your product Document which Prohibited Use categories are relevant to your features and confirm each is outside your product's scope.
Step 3 Update your ToS Ensure your downstream user Terms of Service incorporate the Prohibited Use Policy restrictions before launch.
Step 4 Monitor updates Assign a process for reviewing Gemma Terms updates. Treat each update as a potential compliance event.
Step 5 Clear your brand Check trademark usage for "Gemma" in your product name and marketing before committing to branding.
Step 6 Plan for substitutability For enterprise or SLA-bound products, document a fallback model option that can be activated without rebuilding your product.
IP and licensing structure context: The Gemma Terms of Use govern how you may use Google's model weights — they do not address who owns your fine-tuning data, your output IP, or the legal structure of your AI product for investment purposes. For analysis of AI IP ownership and licence structuring in commercial and investment contexts, see AI IP Ownership — wcr.legal.
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Oleg Prosin

Oleg Prosin is the Managing Partner at WCR Legal, focusing on international business structuring, regulatory frameworks for FinTech companies, digital assets, and licensing regimes across various jurisdictions. Works with founders and investment firms on compliance, operating models, and cross-border expansion strategies.

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