Abiding by Copyright and Trademark law

We do not permit the violation of other people’s intellectual property rights on Planetary. This includes their copyrighted material and their trademarks. This is in part because we are subject to various international laws including the DCMA but also because we believe in fair compensation of the work of content creators. 

Trademarks

A trademark is generally understood to refer to a recognizable sign, design or expression which identifies products and services as being made or delivered by a particular company or individual. The use of someone else’s trademark in a way that may mislead or confuse people may be a violation of our rules. 

Where we have legal obligations to investigate and take down violations of trademarked content when they are reported to us we will comply with the law.

Trademarks are mostly granted for only limited types of products, so using them outside that area is often acceptable. This is particularly true for ‘weak’ trademarks that use descriptive words or which are used by lots of different companies in different areas. For example, there are many companies providing different services using some variation of the name ‘Public’. It is much less true of ‘Strong’ trademarks, which are particularly distinctive and generally identified with one company. For example, using the name ‘Nike’ for anything is likely to get the attention of their lawyers.

As always, there are exceptions in law for fair use and parody. If you are using these trademarks for parodic or fair use purposes, please try to make sure it’s clear in the context that you are not passing yourself off as the owners of the trademarks so as not to mislead or confuse other users.

Copyright

Planetary responds to copyright complaints submitted under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DCMA”). We will respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement including but not limited to use of a copyrighted image as a profile image, republishing of videos or images.

Remember, there are limits to copyright, and fair use rules that apply even to copyrighted materials. If you receive a DMCA takedown request from us, you may contest it and the content will be unbocked. Once that happens it's the complaints obligation to contact you directly and engage with the courts to compel you to remove the content. 

* Provisional: All these policies are provisional and will be revised and updated as we see use on the platform.