Intellectual Property Rights Guidelines

Date of enactment and enforcement: 1 July 2020

■ What are Intellectual Property Rights?
・Intellectual property rights are defined as "patent rights, utility model rights, design rights, copyrights, trademark rights and other rights relating to intellectual property that are established by law or that relate to legally protected interests".
・For example, copyright protects text, pictures, music, photographs and videos, portrait rights protect photographed subjects, and publicity rights protect the names and photographs of celebrities.

■ Copyright
・All works of authorship, such as writings, drawings, photographs and videos, are protected by the creator (this is called "copyright"). Copyright
・The copyright of all works, including texts, drawings, photographs and videos, is owned and protected by their creators ("copyright").
・It may be an infringement of copyright to copy and distribute other people's copyrighted materials to students, or to change the contents of copyrighted materials and publish them (please note that it may also be an infringement of copyright to use published articles and information as materials). Please be aware of this.
・Even when using copyright-free works available on the internet, please check the scope of use and conditions set out by the provider of the work.

■ Portrait rights and publicity rights
・If you use a photo of another person's face or scenery in your online lesson materials, please make sure that there are no problems with copyrights, portrait rights, or publicity rights.
・If you want to use a photo of someone else's face or scenery, you need to make sure that there are no copyright, portrait right or publicity right issues.
・The right of publicity is considered to be a right that arises in relation to anything that is likely to attract customers, such as a celebrity's face or name.

■ Determining whether there is infringement of rights
・Therefore, it is up to the courts and the relevant government agencies to decide whether or not intellectual property rights have been infringed. Therefore, it is not possible for us to judge whether or not there are any intellectual property rights issues in the teaching materials created by our teachers.
・If any person or third party claims to have intellectual property rights, we will not be able to respond to such claims, so please respond at your own risk and expense.(We will not be held responsible for any such claims.)
・If we receive a report of infringement from a copyright holder or an enquiry from a law enforcement agency, we may take action at our own discretion.

The above