Intellectual Property Policy: Your Copyrights and Trademarks

Table of Contents

• Copyright
• Trademark
• Repeat Infringer Policy
• Appeals

WhatsApp LLC (if you live in the UK or outside of the European Region) and WhatsApp Ireland Limited (if you live in the European Region) (collectively "WhatsApp," "our," "we," or "us") is committed to helping people and organizations protect their intellectual property rights. Our users agree to our Terms of Service ("Terms") by installing, accessing, or using our apps, services, features, software, or website (together, "Services"). Our Terms do not allow our users to violate someone else's intellectual property rights when using our Services, including their copyrights and trademarks.

As explained in more detail in our Privacy Policy, we do not retain our users' messages in the ordinary course of providing our Services. We do, however, host our users' account information, including our users' profile picture, profile name, or about message, if they decide to include them as part of their account information, as well as content on Channels.

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Copyright is a legal right that seeks to protect original works of authorship (example: books, music, film, art). Generally, copyright protects original expression such as words or images. It does not protect facts and ideas, although it may protect the original words or images used to describe an idea. Copyright also doesn’t protect things like names, titles and slogans; however, another legal right called a trademark might protect those.

If you believe content on WhatsApp violates your copyrighted work, you can report it by filling out contact form.

Before you report a claim of copyright infringement, you may want to send a message to the relevant WhatsApp user you believe may be infringing your copyright. You may be able to resolve the issue with them directly.

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A trademark is a word, slogan, symbol or design (example: brand name, logo) that distinguishes the products or services offered by one person, group or company from another. Generally, trademark law seeks to prevent confusion among consumers about who provides or is affiliated with a product or service.

If you believe content on WhatsApp violates your trademark work, you can report it by filling out this contact form.

Before you report a claim of trademark infringement, you may want to send a message to the relevant WhatsApp user you believe may be infringing your trademark. You may be able to resolve the issue with them directly.

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If a person repeatedly posts content that violates intellectual property rights then the following may occur:

• Their Account may be banned. Learn more about account bans here.
• Their Channel may be suspended. Learn more about actions we may take here.

If any of the actions we take are reversed due to an appeal or because a rights owner withdrew their report, then we’ll take that into account under our repeat infringer policy.

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Appeals

If we have removed your content from your Channel because of an intellectual property report, and you believe we should not have done so, you can submit an appeal.

To appeal the intellectual property action taken on your Channel, tap channel alerts on the banner or tap your channel name > channel alerts.

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