IPR Complaints

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.
• 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 brand or product. That goes to our contact route rather than here.
• Content we do not host. If the material sits on a domain that is not ours, the notice belongs with whoever does host it.

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. Under the United States regime a notice carries a statement made under penalty of perjury, and a person who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing can be liable for the damage that causes. 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.

• A physical or electronic signature of the rights holder, or of someone authorised to act for them.
• Identification of the work you say has been infringed.
• Identification of the material you are asking us to remove, with enough detail for us to find it. A full URL for each item is the detail that matters most.
• Your contact details: name, postal address, telephone number and email.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the rights holder, an agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.

Those elements are the shape of the United States regime, which applies to us because material we serve is reachable from there. A notice that meets them is also enough for us to act under the Indian rules, so one properly made notice covers both.

Trademark complaints are common on a platform where businesses list goods, and the notice machinery above does not map onto them. There is an intake route for them, and it is deliberately a different one.

Tell us, at minimum:

• The mark, its registration number and the jurisdiction it is registered in.
• 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.

Assessment differs from copyright, and we will not decide a trademark 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.

Three routes, because two regimes require different things of us and trademark is not covered by either notice framework.

A designated agent is a formal appointment rather than a mailbox, and a Grievance Officer is required to be published by name with a physical address. Both are named above rather than hidden behind a form, which is the point of them.

Every notice is logged on arrival, with the time it was received, who sent it, the addresses complained of and the customer whose content is involved. The log is not administrative tidiness: it is the record that the process was followed.

The Intermediary Guidelines Rules require an intermediary to acknowledge a complaint within 24 hours and to dispose of it within 15 days, and to remove unlawful material within 36 hours of a court order or a notification from the appropriate government. The commitments above are what we undertake to do, and they are unfilled until we can staff them, weekends included.

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.

Complaint records are retained for [COMPLAINT LOG RETENTION].

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.

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, under penalty of perjury, of a good-faith belief that the material was removed as a result of a mistake or a misidentification.
• Contact details, and consent to the jurisdiction counsel confirms applies.

We validate it the same way, forward it to whoever sent the original notice, and wait [STATUTORY WAITING PERIOD]. If we are not told within that period that proceedings have been brought, the material may be restored. We do not decide who was right; the waiting period exists so that a court can.

We terminate the accounts of customers who repeatedly infringe. That is a condition of safe harbour rather than a discretionary policy, and it has to be applied rather than published.

• Every valid notice acted on is recorded against the customer it concerns, whether or not they dispute it.
• 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 [REPEAT INFRINGER THRESHOLD].

Termination ends the service for that business, which is why it is a threshold rather than a judgement call made once per complaint.

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

Under the United States regime, a person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing may be liable for the damages that misrepresentation causes, including the costs of the person whose material was removed. Using this channel to take down a competitor’s legitimate listing is the case that provision exists for.

Every notice we receive is logged and kept, 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.

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