Welcome to our terms of use page and thank you for reviewing them. We’re glad you are as interested in protecting your data and media ownership as we are. Let’s cut to the chase. You retain all ownership rights to your data and your media. We do not take ownership of the data that is submitted to us and license it back to you. This is important, and not everyone does it this way.
When you are using our services we need your permission to use the media, that you own, to do the things you’d like us to do on your behalf. Even for simple things like displaying images to your client, legally we need a license to do this. The legal language to grant us this licensing looks scary, and it certainly can be when the licensing isn’t scoped correctly. In our Terms of Use, you are only granting us a license to your media when it’s in connection with our Products. For anything that is unrelated to our Products, you are NOT granting us a license to use your media.
Here’s the legal language that grants us the licensing to your Intellectual Property that we need to provide the products and services of our platform to your business:
"When you submit, upload, or post any Submitted Content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our products, you hereby grant us, a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your Submitted Content, subject in each case to any use and sharing preferences or other restrictions you have specified within the platform."
It’s not a scary as it sounds, especially because it is scoped to only the use of your media when in connection with our Products. Here's a breakdown of what these things mean in layman terms:
Non-exclusive: This means you can give the same rights to others too, like to your clients.
Transferable: The entire company can be transferred to another owner, but all of the limitations to these rights remain in place exactly as they are. The license you are granting is only in connection with our Products.
Sub-licensable: The company can give some or all of these rights to other parties. This is used when you’ve requested us to upload your content to a 3rd party like Vimeo, YouTube, the MLS, etc.
Royalty-free: We don’t have to pay you royalties to use your content to do the things you’ve asked us to do.
Worldwide: This license is "worldwide" because the internet is global, and we need to be able to do these things no matter where in the world the users are.
Host: Keep your content on our servers, for use in connection with our Products.
Use: This means we can do things with your content to make the service work, like showing your photos in different sizes.
Distribute: We need to be able to share your content, like allowing your client to download your photos.
Modify: Sometimes we need to change the format of your content so it works better on the platform, like making a photo smaller for faster loading.
Run: This is about using your content in the normal operation of our service.
Copy: We need to make copies of your content, like backups, so it’s never lost.
Publicly Perform or Display: This means showing your content to other "users" on the platform, like your clients or prospective home buyers.
Translate: If your content has text, it might need to be translated for users in other countries.
Create Derivative Works: To create new things based on your content, like using your media in a social media design that is part of the Marketing Kit.
Remember, this doesn't mean we own your content – you still do. This doesn’t mean we have a license we can do anything we want with either. We can only use your content when it’s in connection with our Products. We legally need these permissions to make our service work properly with the content you choose to share with us.