IPR Compliance

It is for reports that material published through SorviAI by one of our customers infringes intellectual property you own or are authorised to act for.

That includes:

• Public storefronts. Catalogue pages, product images and product copy served from a SorviAI address.
• Uploaded material. Logos, images, attachments and documents a customer has published through the platform, including a Nest file shared by public link (public links are switched on by default).
• Portal content. Material a customer has made reachable to their own customers or suppliers.

It is not the route for:

• A commercial dispute with one of our customers. Pricing, delivery, refunds and contract terms are between you and them. We have no standing in it.
• A complaint about SorviAI’s own name or logo. Write to [email protected]; our Mentions légales explain who owns them.
• Content we do not host. If the material sits on a domain that is not ours, the notice belongs with whoever does host it.
• Other illegal content. Fraud, phishing, defamation, terrorist material and similar reports go through the route in our Abuse Policy.

Two things are worth knowing before you write, because both change what a notice can achieve.

We cannot adjudicate ownership. Deciding who holds the rights in a photograph is not something a hosting platform is equipped to do, and a platform that tries ends up arbitrating between two parties it knows nothing about. What we can do is act on a properly made notice, tell our customer what was removed and why, and pass any counter-notice back to you.

A notice has consequences for the person who sends it. Knowingly false notices can make the sender liable to the business affected. See notices sent in bad faith.

If the material looks like a misunderstanding rather than deliberate copying, contacting the business directly is usually faster than either of us.

A takedown notice has required elements. An incomplete notice is the single biggest source of delay here, so they are listed rather than summarised: if one is missing we will write back saying which, and we will not act on the notice until it is there.

Please include:

• Your full name, postal address, telephone number and an email address we can reply to.
• The work you say has been infringed, and your right in it: that you are the owner, or are authorised to act for the owner.
• The exact location of the material: the full URL of each item, with enough detail for us to find it.
• A clear explanation of why the use is unlawful: what has been copied, and that it was not licensed or otherwise permitted.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the rights holder, its agent or the law, and that the information and allegations in your notice are accurate and complete.
• Your physical or electronic signature, which can be your typed full name.

Under EU law, a host is not liable for material it stores for a customer while it does not know the material is unlawful, and must act expeditiously to remove or disable access to it once it does (Digital Services Act, art. 6). A notice with the elements above is what gives us that knowledge. Our customer, as the business that published the material, is the person primarily responsible for it and the proper defendant to any claim. If a court orders us to remove or block material, we comply.

Trade mark complaints are common on a platform where businesses list goods, and the copyright notice above does not map onto them. There is an intake route for them, and it asks for different things.

Tell us, at minimum:

• The mark, its registration number and the register it is on: the French office (INPI), the European Union Intellectual Property Office, or an international registration under the Madrid system designating France or the European Union. A trade mark protects only in the territories where it is registered.
• The goods or services it is registered for.
• The exact listings or pages you are complaining about, by URL.
• Why the use complained of infringes: counterfeit goods, use of the mark in listings, or something else.
• Your contact details, and the statement and signature asked for above.

Assessment differs from copyright, and we will not decide a trade mark dispute between two businesses. Where a listing is plainly counterfeit we act on it; where the question is whether one company may use a word another has registered, we pass the complaint to the customer and leave it with the parties. If you rely on an unregistered right, such as unfair competition or an earlier company or trade name, say which law gives you the right and explain the basis.

Counterfeit goods

If a storefront offers counterfeit goods, send us a notice through the route below so that we can disable the listing. Separately, French customs can detain suspected counterfeit goods at the border on an application by the rights holder (Regulation (EU) No 608/2013), and counterfeiting (contrefaçon) is a criminal offence in France. Neither route depends on a notice to us.

Copyright and trade mark notices ask different things of us, but every notice reaches the same team, and every notice is read and decided by a person.

You can also write to us by post at our registered office. Our full company details are in our Mentions légales.

Our team handles every notice by hand, and keeps a record of each one: the time it was received, who sent it, the addresses complained of and the customer whose content is involved. The record is the evidence that the process was followed.

We act narrowly, on purpose. Taking down an entire storefront over one image turns a third party’s complaint into an outage for a paying business that may have done nothing wrong. Removal is item by item.

Notice and complaint records are kept for 6 years.

A takedown route with no way to challenge it is its own problem. If we remove material belonging to one of our customers, they can tell us we got it wrong, and anyone affected by a decision can ask for it to be looked at again.

Counter-notices

A counter-notice needs the same seriousness as a notice, and should contain:

• The signature of the customer or someone authorised to act for them.
• Identification of the material removed and where it appeared before removal.
• A statement of a good-faith belief that the material was removed as a result of a mistake or a misidentification.
• Contact details, and agreement to accept service of proceedings from the person who sent the notice.

We validate it the same way, forward it to whoever sent the original notice, and wait 10 to 14 working days. If we are not told within that period that proceedings have been brought, the material may be restored. Where a notice sets out specific facts showing a clear infringement, we do not restore the material merely because the period has passed. We do not decide who was right; the waiting period exists so that a court can.

Asking for a review

Our customer, and anyone who sent us a notice, can ask for any decision on it to be reviewed, free of charge, by email to [email protected], for six months after we tell them of it. A senior member of our team who did not take the original decision looks at it again and tells you the result and the reasons. Asking for a review does not stop you going to court, using an out-of-court dispute settlement body certified under article 21 of the Digital Services Act, or complaining to Arcom, the French Digital Services Coordinator.

We terminate the accounts of customers who repeatedly infringe, after a warning, as the EU Digital Services Act (art. 23) expects of a host. It has to be applied rather than only published.

• Every valid notice acted on is recorded against the customer it concerns, whether or not they dispute it. No count is kept automatically; our team keeps the count by hand from the notices it records.
• A counter-notice that goes unchallenged does not count against them, because on the face of it the removal was wrong.
• The threshold at which an account is terminated is 3 upheld notices within 12 months. We warn the customer first, and tell them the reasons when we act.

Termination ends the service for that business, which is why it is a threshold rather than a judgement call made once per complaint. A terminated customer can still have its data exported, as our Terms of Service set out.

A notice is a legal instrument, and sending one to remove material you have no rights in is not a free action.

• In France, a person who sends a notice knowing it to be false, to have material removed, can be liable to the business affected for the harm it causes.
• If someone frequently sends us notices that are manifestly unfounded, we warn them and may then stop processing their notices for a reasonable period, as the EU Digital Services Act (art. 23) allows.

Every notice we receive is recorded, including the ones we decline to act on. If a pattern of unfounded notices comes from one source, that record is what the affected business will be given.

We may update this page as the law and our process change. The version and effective date at the top tell you which one you are reading. This is the first published version. Every later version will be published here with its date, and earlier versions will be kept at this address.

The words on this page that carry a specific legal meaning, in plain language.