Copyright & Intellectual
Property Policy

Introduction

Selnotes exists because creators — students, educators, and independent authors — produce original work worth sharing with the world. Protecting that work isn't just a legal obligation; it's fundamental to why the platform exists. This Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy sets out the rules that govern all content on Selnotes, the rights that creators and buyers hold, and the processes by which infringement claims are made and resolved.

This policy applies to every piece of content on the platform — product files, thumbnails, product descriptions, profile images, and any other material uploaded to or generated through Selnotes. It applies equally to sellers, buyers, and to Selnotes itself.

We comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) under 17 U.S.C. § 512 as our primary framework for handling infringement claims, and we operate as a designated DMCA service provider. We also comply with the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), and respect the international copyright framework established by the Berne Convention and the WIPO Copyright Treaty.

Who Owns What

Ownership of intellectual property on Selnotes falls into three distinct categories, and it's important to understand exactly how each works.

Seller-created content

When you upload a product to Selnotes — a set of study notes, a course, a template, an ebook, or any other digital file — you retain full copyright ownership of that work. Uploading to Selnotes does not transfer ownership, does not grant Selnotes co-authorship, and does not create any shared intellectual property. The only rights you grant to Selnotes are the limited hosting and promotional rights described in the next section.

This ownership is contingent on the work being genuinely yours. If you upload material that is entirely or substantially derived from a copyrighted work you don't own, you don't hold copyright in that material — and uploading it to Selnotes does not grant you rights you don't have.

Selnotes platform

Selnotes Technologies L.L.C. holds all intellectual property rights in the platform itself — its codebase, user interface design, visual identity, brand assets, proprietary algorithms, and all original content created by Selnotes (including marketing materials, platform copy, and documentation). These rights are reserved and may not be reproduced, adapted, or used without written permission.

Buyer licenses

Buyers do not acquire copyright ownership when they purchase a product. They receive a limited personal license to use the product for the purposes stated in the listing. Full details of what that license includes and excludes are covered in the Buyer License section.

License You Grant to Selnotes

By listing a product on Selnotes, you grant Selnotes Technologies L.L.C. a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable license to:

• Host, store, reproduce, and deliver your product files to buyers who have legitimately purchased them.
• Display your product thumbnails, title, description, and preview content on the Selnotes marketplace.
• Include your product in curated collections, featured sections, and category pages on the platform.
• Use your product title, thumbnail, and brief description in Selnotes' promotional materials — including social media posts, advertisements, email campaigns, and press materials — for the purpose of marketing the Selnotes marketplace.
• Generate preview versions or compressed excerpts of your product for the purposes of product discovery (e.g. showing page 1 of a PDF as a preview, displaying a portion of a template).

This license is granted solely for the purpose of operating and promoting the Selnotes marketplace. Selnotes will never modify, adapt, or create derivative works from your product files themselves without your consent. We will not sell your content to third parties or use it in any way outside the scope described above.

This license terminates automatically when you remove a product from the platform. Following removal, Selnotes will stop actively promoting the product and will not use your content in new campaigns. Residual use in archived materials (e.g. a cached blog post that once featured your product) may persist briefly and is not considered a breach of this termination.

License Buyers Receive

When a buyer completes a purchase on Selnotes, they receive a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, personal-use license to access and use the purchased product. The exact scope of this license depends on what the seller has specified in the product listing.

Default license (when no scope is specified)

If a seller does not explicitly state the license scope, the purchase grants the buyer the right to:

• Download and retain a personal copy of the product.
• Read, view, or use the product for their own personal, non-commercial study or work.
• Print a single copy for personal reference.

The default license does not grant the right to:

• Share, distribute, or transmit the product to any third party — whether free of charge or for payment.
• Re-upload the product to Selnotes or any other marketplace.
• Use the product, or any portion of it, in a commercially distributed work without the seller's explicit permission.
• Present the product's content as your own original work in any academic, professional, or published context.
• Create derivative works intended for public distribution.

Extended licenses

Sellers may offer expanded license scopes — for example, explicitly granting commercial use, classroom distribution rights, or team licensing — by clearly stating this in their product description or in an attached license document. These extended terms supplement, not replace, this policy. Any license grant by a seller is a private agreement between the seller and the buyer; Selnotes is not a party to it.

Seller Content Obligations

As a seller on Selnotes, you make the following representations every time you upload and list a product. These are not aspirational guidelines — they are conditions of your use of the platform:

• You own or control the rights to everything you upload. This includes the primary content of the file, any images or graphics used within it, any fonts embedded in it, and any other third-party elements incorporated into it.
• The product does not reproduce substantial portions of any third-party copyrighted work without a valid license or legal exception. Writing your own study notes based on your understanding of a subject is fine. Scanning chapters from a textbook, transcribing lecture slides you don't own, or reproducing exam papers that belong to an institution is not.
• The product does not infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property right belonging to any person or entity.
• You have not, and will not, use any generative AI tool to reproduce substantial portions of a specific copyrighted work. Using AI to generate original supplementary content you've crafted and curated is a different matter — see the AI-Generated Content section.
• Your product description is accurate. Claiming that a product covers content it doesn't cover, or misrepresenting the extent of original authorship, may constitute both a copyright misrepresentation and a breach of our Terms of Service.

By listing a product, you indemnify Selnotes against any intellectual property claim brought by a third party arising from content you've uploaded. This means that if a rights holder makes a valid claim against Selnotes because of something you uploaded, you are responsible for the legal and financial consequences of that claim.

What You Can and Cannot Upload

This is the practical section. These examples are not exhaustive, but they reflect the most common edge cases on a platform like Selnotes.

When you are unsure whether something is allowed, the test is straightforward: does this contain a substantial portion of someone else's creative expression that they didn't authorise you to redistribute? If the answer is yes, or possibly yes, don't upload it. Contact us through our contact page and we'll give you a plain-language answer.

Academic Content & Integrity

Selnotes occupies a specific and important space in the academic world, and we've thought carefully about where we stand. Buying and selling study notes, summaries, and revision materials is legal and has existed in some form since photocopied notes were sold outside university libraries. Our platform modernises that exchange.

Our position is this: selling original educational content — even content designed to help a student understand a subject that will be examined — is not academic fraud. The line is crossed when a product is designed or marketed specifically to be submitted as a student's own work. We do not knowingly facilitate academic fraud, and we will remove products that are explicitly marketed as ready-to-submit assignments, essays, or assessments.

Institutional copyright

Universities, schools, and examination boards hold copyright in their original materials — including unpublished exam papers, internally created course content, and official teaching materials distributed to enrolled students. The fact that you received these materials as a student does not grant you the right to reproduce and sell them.

However, your own notes, summaries, and materials — even if created in response to a particular course or syllabus — are your intellectual property, provided they are genuinely your own expression and not a copy of materials provided to you under a copyright-restricted institutional license.

Fair use and fair dealing

Under US copyright law, fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107) and under UK/Commonwealth law, fair dealing, permit limited use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes including education, commentary, criticism, and research. However, these doctrines do not extend to commercial reproduction and redistribution of substantial portions of a work. Including a brief quote from a textbook to illustrate a point in your study guide likely falls within fair use. Reproducing entire chapters does not. Selnotes does not adjudicate fair use claims on behalf of sellers — if your product relies on fair use, you are responsible for ensuring that reliance is legally sound.

AI-Generated Content

Generative AI tools have become a significant part of how educational and creative content is produced, and Selnotes has a clear, considered position on AI-generated content.

What is permitted

You may use AI tools as part of your creative process — to draft, refine, structure, illustrate, or improve content that you then review, edit, and curate substantially. A product that was drafted with AI assistance but substantially shaped, fact-checked, organised, and personalised by you is a legitimate original product. The test is whether the product reflects meaningful original human intellectual contribution.

What is not permitted

You may not upload products that consist entirely of raw, unmodified AI-generated text or content with no material original contribution from you. This applies even when the output is technically original in the copyright sense. Our concern is not primarily legal — it is quality. Raw AI output without human curation, verification, and expertise doesn't serve our buyers well, and we will remove products that are clearly low-effort, AI-mass-produced content.

You may not use AI tools to reproduce, paraphrase in bulk, or systematically extract and repackage the specific content of copyrighted works — even if the tool makes superficial changes. Using a language model to rewrite textbook chapters still constitutes derivative infringement.

Disclosure

If your product was substantially produced with AI assistance, we encourage you to disclose this in your product description. Buyers have a reasonable expectation of knowing whether the content they purchase reflects the direct expertise and original thought of a human expert. We may in future require disclosure for AI-assisted products; sellers who disclose proactively will be in a better position.

Copyright ownership of AI content

The copyright status of AI-generated content varies by jurisdiction and continues to evolve. In the United States, the Copyright Office has held that purely AI-generated content without human authorship is not eligible for copyright protection. In practice, this means that sellers who upload AI-generated content with no original human contribution may not actually hold the copyright they represent themselves as holding. Selnotes does not adjudicate copyright ownership but will take reasonable steps to remove content where we have grounds to believe a fraudulent copyright claim is being made.

Trademarks & Branding

Third-party trademarks in listings

You may reference the names of third-party brands, companies, software, or educational institutions in your product title and description where doing so is accurate and informative — for example, "Summary notes for the CFA Level 1 exam" or "Adobe Photoshop beginner's workflow guide." Describing what your product covers is not trademark infringement.

You may not use third-party trademarks, logos, or brand identifiers in a way that implies endorsement, affiliation, or official association that doesn't exist. A product titled "Official Adobe Certified Study Guide" when it has no affiliation with Adobe is a misleading use of a trademark, not a descriptive one, and will be removed.

Selnotes trademarks

The Selnotes name, logo, wordmark, and associated brand assets are registered or common-law trademarks of Selnotes Technologies L.L.C. You may refer to Selnotes by name when it is accurate and necessary — for example, "I'm a seller on Selnotes" or "Available on Selnotes." You may not use the Selnotes name or logo in a way that implies you are Selnotes, that Selnotes officially endorses you, or that your product is produced by or in partnership with Selnotes.

Sellers who wish to indicate they sell on Selnotes may use the phrase "Available on Selnotes" and may link to their Selnotes storefront. No use of the Selnotes logo is permitted without our prior written consent.

DMCA Takedown Process

Selnotes has designated an agent to receive notices of claimed copyright infringement in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512(c). If you believe that content on Selnotes infringes your copyright, you may submit a formal takedown notice to our designated agent.

Designated DMCA Agent

What your notice must include

Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), a valid DMCA takedown notice must contain all of the following elements. Notices that are materially incomplete will not be processed, and we will notify you of the deficiency so you can resubmit.

What happens after you submit

Upon receiving a valid, complete DMCA notice, Selnotes will:

• Acknowledge receipt within 2 business days.
• Review the notice and, where it is sufficiently specific and plausible, disable access to or remove the identified product promptly — typically within 3–5 business days of receipt of a complete notice.
• Notify the seller whose content has been removed that their product has been taken down and provide them with a copy of the notice (with your contact details included, as required by law).
• Inform the seller of their right to submit a counter-notice if they believe the takedown was issued in error.

EU users — DSA notice and action mechanism

Users in the European Union may also submit notices of illegal content under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA requires that we provide an accessible, user-friendly notice mechanism and that we act on valid notices diligently. For copyright-related notices from EU users, the same process above applies. For other categories of illegal content under DSA (e.g. illegal hate speech), contact us through our contact page.

Counter-Notice Procedure

If your product was removed in response to a DMCA notice and you believe the removal was made in error — either because the notice was factually inaccurate, because your use constitutes fair use, or because you hold the necessary license — you may file a counter-notice.

A valid counter-notice must contain all of the following under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3):

Submit your counter-notice through our contact page — select the Copyright / IP category and note it is a DMCA Counter-Notice for the product in question.

Upon receiving a valid counter-notice, Selnotes will forward it to the original complainant and inform them that we will restore the removed content in 10 to 14 business days unless the complainant files an action in court seeking a court order restraining the restoration. If no such action is filed, we will restore the product at the end of that period. We follow this timeline strictly — it is mandated by statute and we cannot accelerate it unilaterally.

Repeat Infringer Policy

Selnotes maintains and enforces a repeat infringer policy in compliance with 17 U.S.C. § 512(i). This policy is a prerequisite for our DMCA safe harbour protection, and we take it seriously.

A seller's account is subject to escalating consequences for confirmed copyright violations:

"Confirmed" means that a complete, valid DMCA notice was received, the seller did not file a timely counter-notice, or the seller filed a counter-notice that was subsequently found by a court to be insufficient. Notices that are resolved in the seller's favour through the counter-notice process do not count toward this tally.

In cases where infringement is particularly egregious — for example, a seller who uploads entire textbooks, systematically scrapes and repackages third-party content, or acts in obvious bad faith — we reserve the right to skip directly to account termination on the first violation.

International Copyright

Copyright on Selnotes is an international matter. Our sellers and buyers come from over 100 countries, and the works being protected by copyright exist across all legal jurisdictions.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, to which 181 countries are signatories, establishes a framework of mutual copyright recognition. Under the Berne Convention, a work that is copyright-protected in its country of origin is automatically entitled to protection in all other signatory countries without registration or formality. This means that a textbook written in Germany, a course video produced in Japan, and a template created in Brazil are all protected by copyright on Selnotes, regardless of where the infringing upload originates.

The WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) extend these protections specifically to digital environments, establishing that copyright applies to digital distribution and online availability of works. We operate within this framework and enforce it accordingly.

For users in the United Kingdom, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) governs copyright in UK-originated works. For EU users, the EU Copyright Directive (2019/790) and related national implementations apply. For Australian users, the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) applies. In all cases, Selnotes enforces copyright claims under the most protective standard applicable.

Rights holders outside the United States may submit takedown notices using the same process described above. The DMCA process is our operational framework, but we will honour valid copyright claims under any applicable national law, regardless of whether they fit neatly into a DMCA-style notice format. If you are a rights holder outside the US and are uncertain how to proceed, contact us through our contact page and we'll assist you.

Selnotes Intellectual Property

The Selnotes platform — including its design, codebase, product architecture, visual identity, user interface, proprietary features, and all original content created by Selnotes — is protected by copyright, trademark law, and other intellectual property rights belonging to Selnotes Technologies L.L.C.

You may not copy, reproduce, reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works from any part of the Selnotes platform without our express written permission. Scraping product data, user data, or any other content from Selnotes through automated means — including web crawlers, bots, or scripts — is strictly prohibited without a signed data access agreement with Selnotes.

The Selnotes wordmark, logo, and associated brand assets may not be used, reproduced, modified, or incorporated into any product, website, or marketing material without our prior written consent. Requests for brand asset usage may be submitted through our contact page.

Any feedback, suggestions, or ideas you submit to Selnotes — whether through support conversations, social media, or direct communication — may be used by Selnotes at our discretion without obligation to you. We appreciate feedback greatly, but we cannot enter into agreements that grant you rights over features or improvements we build based on general input from our user community.

Contact & Reporting

For all matters relating to copyright and intellectual property on Selnotes — DMCA takedowns, counter-notices, trademark enquiries, or general questions — please get in touch through our contact page. Select the Copyright / IP category so your message reaches the right team and is handled within the appropriate timeframe.

Selnotes Technologies L.L.C.
Intellectual property is the foundation of everything we do. We enforce these policies rigorously — to protect the creators who build on this platform, and to maintain the integrity of the marketplace for everyone who uses it.