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by mbrubeck 586 days ago
Yes, the Mozilla Corporation paid US$19.1 million in trademark royalties to the Mozilla Foundation in 2022, per their most recent annual report. Also, the Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation.
2 comments

And a lot of people don't realize that "wholly owned" is just a legal construction, it does not mean that they have any say over what the corporation does, how the corporation does that, or that they have any kind of access to any money in the corporation's accounts. The foundation owns the corporation, part of that ownership is that they can't run it. If they did, they'd no longer be a separate non-profit.
But it does mean that the Corporation's dividends all go to the Foundation, its sole shareholder. It has paid such dividends in the past, though as far as I can tell, dividends have been replaced by royalty payments in more recent years.
I think that's page 61, 2.1 in this PDF. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-990...

Do funds go from the Corporation to the Foundation exclusively, or is it ever bidirectional? Common knowledge is "If you donate to the Foundation, the Corporation will never see a penny of it for browser development."