IP Policy

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS & CONTENT POLICY

WAJ Media LLC dba Legal Insurrection and College Insurrection, and effective March 1, 2019 the Legal Insurrection Foundation (“Insurrection”), though the websites, respectively, www.legalinsurrection.com, www.collegeinsurrection.com, criticalrace.org, and www.legalinsurrectionfoundation.org (the “Website”) provide users (“Users”) with the ability to create commentary in connection with the Website’s content. We contractually prohibit Users from using the service to create or use any names, likenesses or images which infringe on third-party intellectual property rights (such as copyright, trademark, trade dress and right of publicity). We encourage intellectual property rights owners to contact us if they believe that a User of our service has infringed their rights. If you let us know that your rights are being infringed by one of our Users, we may, in our sole discretion, require that the User’s content be removed and, if the User continues to infringe your rights (or infringes the rights of others) terminate the User’s access to our services to the extent possible.

If you believe that your intellectual property rights have been infringed by a User of our service, please provide our Intellectual Property Rights Agent with a notification that contains the following information:

1. A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other rights that have been allegedly infringed;
2. Identification of the copyright, trademark or other rights that have been allegedly infringed;
3. The URL or User name as identified on our Website used in connection with the allegedly infringing material;
4. Your name, address, telephone number and email address;
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the rights owner, its agent or the law; and
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other right that is allegedly infringed.

Our Intellectual Property Rights Agent is Ronald D. Coleman, Esq. who may reached by mail at:

Phone: 973-298-1723
Fax: 646-358-8082
Email: [email protected]

With a copy to

Legal Insurrection Foundation
18 Maple Ave #280
Barrington, RI 02806
[email protected]

We also encourage our users to contact us if they suspect that another user is infringing the rights of a third party. Please utilize the same information set forth above regarding the procedure to notify us of a potential infringement by a user of our service.

QUESTIONABLE MATERIAL & PROHIBITED CONTENT GUIDELINES

These guidelines were written to help you better understand the rules under which you may use the services offered on the Website. If you have any questions regarding the information contained on this page please contact [email protected].

Below are some general guidelines that you can use to govern your actions over the types of content which may be prohibited on the Website. PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THIS LIST IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

General Guidelines for Prohibited Content

• Content that may infringe on the rights of a third party.

• Use of marks that signify hate towards another group of people.

• Hate and/or racist terms.

• Inappropriate content or nudity that is not artistic in nature.

• Content that exploits images or the likeness of minors.

• Obscene and vulgar comments and offensive remarks that harass, threaten, defame or abuse

others.

• Content that depicts violence, is obscene, abusive, fraudulent or otherwise threatening.

• Content that glamorize the use of illegal substances and drugs.

• Material that is generally offensive or in bad taste, as determined exclusively by Insurrection.

The list outlined above should NOT be construed as an exhaustive list of offensive material but rather as a general guideline for you to follow.

Insurrection will determine, in its sole and absolute discretion, whether your content is in compliance with the guidelines outlined in this policy and the Insurrection content usage policy set forth in Insurrection’s Terms and Conditions of Use. Any content that is determined to not be in compliance or is of questionable nature, may be subject to removal, in accordance with Insurrection’s Terms and Conditions of Use, which can be found at https://legalinsurrection.com/terms-and-conditions-of-use/

COPYRIGHT, TRADEMARK AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY GUIDELINES

These guidelines are set forth to assist you in understanding Intellectual Property laws as they relate to your use of content through the services offered by Insurrection. The information contained on this page is for informative purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. For specific advice regarding your use of content through Insurrection, please consult an attorney in your local jurisdiction.

Copyright

What is a Copyright?

A copyright protects original work of authorship such as a picture, drawing, graphics, software program, written work, sculpture, song, or photograph. Copyright law prevents you from copying another’s copyrighted work for any purpose; making things based on the copyrighted work; distributing copies of the copyrighted work; publicly performing the copyrighted work; displaying the copyrighted work; and in the case of sound recordings, transmitting the recording over the internet or in another media. In a nutshell, copyright law protects the expression of one’s ideas.

How long does copyright protection last?

The term of a copyright for a particular work depends on several factors, including whether it has been published, and, if so, the date of first publication. As a general rule, for works created after Jan. 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For works first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors. In general works created before 1922 are in the public domain. However, if a change has been made to a work taken from the public domain, the new work may be copyrightable and protected. To determine the length of copyright protection for a particular work, consult Chapter 3 of the Copyright Act (Title 17 of the United States Code).

Trademark What is a Trademark?

A trademark is a word, name, symbol or other device that identifies the goods or services of a given person or company and distinguishes them from the goods or services of other persons or companies. Trademark law prevents you from using another’s trademark (such as the name of a particular news source) to promote goods or services which may be similar in nature because such use will cause consumers to believe that the legitimate trademark owner has made, approved of, or endorsed your goods or services. In short, a trademark is a name or brand. For example, COCA-COLA® is a registered trademark.

What is a Service Mark?

A Service Mark is a kind of trademark meant to apply to services only.  Any word, name, symbol, or device or any combination thereof adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant to identify and distinguish their services from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the source of those services. For instance, “What Will Brown do for You? ” is a service mark of UPS.

What can be protected by the law of trademark?

Word(s), word(s) plus design, trade dress, packaging, sound, slogans, smell, service mark, geographic marks, collective marks, certification marks, and family marks.

What is Trade Dress?

Trade dress is used to identify the particular goods or services of a party in the marketplace, where those goods or services have a distinctive look such as unique packaging. Trade dress can function as a trademark.  An example of trade dress is Coca Cola’s classic hourglass shaped cola bottle.

What are Trademark rights?

An owner of a trademark, or of a service mark or trade dress – either of which can function as trademarks – has the right to use that mark and to prevent others from wrongfully benefiting from the mark’s good will and reputation in the marketplace.

What is the difference between a Trademark and a Registered Trademark?

The ® symbol may only be used in association with a trademark that is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. If the trademark/service mark is followed by a TM or SM symbol the goods pr services provider is using the mark as a trademark and is asserting trademark rights in it, although the mark may not be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  Such a mark may be entitled to less protection than a Registered Trademark, but this not always be the case.

Right of Publicity

What is Right of Publicity?

The Right of Publicity makes it unlawful to use another’s identity for commercial advantage without permission. A person’s “identity” includes, for example, his or her look, voice, name, nickname, professional name, and other distinctive characteristics. For example, right of publicity laws prohibits you from using the picture of a celebrity without authorization, regardless of whether that celebrity is alive or dead, except in connection with news reporting and other recognized fair use.

Right of Privacy

What is Right of Privacy?

Generally, the right of privacy protects the intrusion into one’s private affairs, disclosure of one’s embarrassing private facts, and publicly placing one in a false light in the public eye.

Examples of Prohibited Content

In accordance with intellectual property laws as outlined above, Insurrection has certain rules in place regarding the types of information that you may use in connection with the services offered by Insurrection. Unless an exception is cleared in advance with Insurrection management or legal counsel, Insurrection contributors must follow these rules and restrictions:

•   NO third-party graphical content, including photographs, illustrations, charts, graphs or artwork.  “Third-party” means you didn’t create it yourself.  “Create it yourself” means from scratch.

•   NO third-party editorial content, including articles, news stories, Wikipedia material or published material.  “Third-party” means you didn’t create it yourself.  “Create it yourself” means from scratch.

NEWS AND COMMENTARY EXCEPTION:  Both the foregoing rules are subject to the fair use exception under the fair use doctrine of copyright:

1. Regarding graphical material, you may reproduce third party materials for purposes of news or analysis about the graphic content itself
2. Regarding editorial content, you may reproduce excerpts of limited portions of the original content that has already been published, with attribution (ideally, a link), for any purpose. The definition of “limited portions” is elastic and requires the exercise of judgment and discretion (for example, the more of your original work is spent commenting or analyzing the original material itself, the more of it you can usually use).  You may and should inquire about any doubts you have on this issue.

• NO confidential, licensed or other material whose use is known to you, or reasonably should be known to you, to be restricted by oral or written agreement contract or a reasonable expectation of privacy.  Any exceptions to this must be cleared in advance.

More Information

For additional information on Copyrights, please visit the United States Copyright Office Library of Congress at http://www.copyright.gov. For additional information on Trademarks, please visit the United States Patent and Trademark Office at http://www.uspto.gov. Insurrection management may also arrange to have pertinent, specific questions answered by its legal counsel as it deems necessary.

Last Updated: 5-24-2022