Trademark Guidelines

#What a trademark is, and where we stand

A trademark is a sign that tells buyers where something came from: a name, a logo, a slogan, sometimes a shape or a color. Its purpose is to prevent confusion about source, and that phrase is very nearly the whole of it. Trademark law is not a general right to control every mention of a word. It is a right against uses that make people think your goods are somebody else's, or somebody else's are yours.

Which is why using a brand's name to talk about the brand has always been permitted, and why parody, commentary, criticism and reporting sit outside the harm the law aims at. Nobody is confused about who made a joke at a company's expense.

Memesly is itself a parody. Every page carries a notice saying so, and we take the position that parody and commentary are legitimate uses the law recognizes. We take the equally firm position that impersonation is not one of them, and that dressing impersonation in the vocabulary of parody does not convert it into parody.

#What is allowed

Content on Memesly may:

• Name a mark in passing, to say what something is or to compare it with something else. A reference is not a claim.
• Parody it. Exaggerate a brand, invert it, make it ridiculous. Parody works by being recognizable, so it necessarily uses the thing it is mocking.
• Comment on it or criticize it. Opinions about a company, its token or its conduct are protected speech in most places and are not a trademark problem.
• Be fan content, provided it is labeled as fan content and does not present itself as official.

Two conditions run through all four. The use has to be clearly what it is, and it must not imply endorsement, sponsorship or affiliation. A parody that a hurried reader mistakes for the real account has failed at being a parody, whatever its author intended.

#What is not allowed

Content on Memesly may not:

• Pose as a brand. Taking a company's exact name, logo and colors as your profile identity, so that people believe they are looking at the company, is impersonation, and it is the clearest violation on this page.
• Imply sponsorship, endorsement or partnership that does not exist. Claiming to be working with a brand, backed by it, or launching in cooperation with it when you are not.
• Use a mark to make people think a token is official. This is the specific harm the policy exists to prevent. A token does not belong to a company because it borrowed the name, and people lose real money over exactly this confusion.
• Copy a brand's visual identity closely enough that the difference is only visible if you go looking. Slight misspellings, swapped characters and near identical logos are how this is usually done, and doing it carefully is evidence of intent rather than a defense.
• Attach a mark to content built to damage the owner rather than to comment on them, or use it to sell something the owner would obviously never sanction.

THE TEST WE APPLY IS SIMPLE. WOULD AN ORDINARY PERSON, GLANCING AT THIS FOR TWO SECONDS, COME AWAY BELIEVING THE BRAND MADE IT OR APPROVED IT? IF THE ANSWER IS YES, IT IS IMPERSONATION, AND CALLING IT SATIRE DOES NOT CHANGE THE ANSWER.

#We do not settle trademark disputes

We are a website. We do not keep a register, cannot verify a chain of title, and are in no position to rule on whether a mark is valid, whether it covers the goods in question, whether it has been abandoned, or whether a particular use is likely to confuse anybody. Those questions occupy specialist lawyers and courts for years. They do not get answered in a support inbox.

What we do is narrower, and honest about being narrow. We look at whether content on our site is presenting itself as somebody it is not. If it is, we act, because it is our site and misleading people on it is our problem. If the real question is who owns what, that is a dispute between the parties, and it belongs somewhere with a docket.

Nothing we do is a legal determination. Removing content is not a finding of infringement. Leaving it up is not a finding that it is lawful. Both are housekeeping decisions about a website.

#Reporting a problem

Email . Include:

• Who you are, and your authority. Your name, the company or rights holder you act for, and your relationship to them. If you are outside counsel or an agent, say so.
• The mark. What it is, the registration number, and the jurisdiction it is registered in. If you are relying on an unregistered mark, say that instead and explain the basis, because we would much rather have the honest version than a number that does not check out.
• Where the content is. The full URL, plus enough detail to identify the specific item: which profile, which token, which comment, which image.
• What you think is wrong with it. One or two sentences will do. Impersonation, a false claim of affiliation, or something else.
• What you want. Removal, a label, a correction, or simply a note on file. Not every report needs the maximum response, and telling us what would resolve it usually gets there faster.

#What we do with a report

We read every report. Then, in rough order:

• We look at the content in the context it appears in, not as a cropped screenshot. Context is most of the analysis in trademark, and a crop removes it.
• We ask whether an ordinary reader would be misled about who is behind the content.
• Where the answer is yes, we act. Depending on the case that means removing the content, removing an impersonating profile, unlisting a token from our pages, or requiring a clear unaffiliated label.
• Where the answer is no, and the content reads as parody or commentary, we say so and explain why. You are free to disagree, to take it up with the person responsible, and if it reaches a court order we will comply with the order.
• We tell the person who posted it what happened and why.

We aim to respond within a few days. This is a small team, not a round the clock desk.

#If a report names your content

You will hear from us before or as anything is removed, unless the content is a straightforward impersonation of a well known brand, in which case it comes down first and the conversation happens afterward.

You can respond. Useful responses look like:

• An explanation of why the use is parody or commentary, in your own words. You do not need legal vocabulary to make the point.
• A license, permission or affiliation you genuinely have, with something showing it.
• A willingness to relabel. Adding an unmistakable notice that a project is unofficial resolves a large share of these reports, and it costs one line of text.
• Evidence that the reporter is not who they say they are, which does happen.

What does not help: silence, a fresh profile carrying the same content, or an argument that the brand should be flattered.

If we get it wrong, tell us and we will look again. We would rather reverse a bad call than defend one.

#Repeat and deliberate violations

One mistake, corrected, is a mistake. A pattern is a decision.

• Repeated violations across different profiles or wallets end with the account closed and further launches from that wallet refused.
• Evidence of deliberate impersonation, meaning a mark copied carefully and presented as official in order to move money, is treated as an immediate matter rather than a warning.
• Rebuilding the same impersonation under a new handle after a removal counts as a further violation in its own right.

As everywhere else on this site, closing an account stops somebody using our pages. It does not reach anything already written to a blockchain, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

#Memesly's own marks

The Memesly name, the logo, the site design and the written content belong to Memesly. We are not precious about people talking about the site, quoting it, screenshotting it or making fun of it. That is what a parody site is for, and complaining about it would make us poor sports.

Two things we do ask:

• Do not use Memesly branding in a way that suggests we endorse, back, audit or verify you, your project or your token. We do none of those things for anybody.
• Do not present yourself as Memesly, or as an official account, channel or representative of it. Impersonating us is the same problem as impersonating anyone else, with the extra detail that it is usually a prelude to stealing from somebody.

The parody notice at the foot of every page is the operative statement about affiliation. It says Memesly is a satirical parody of subscription creator platforms, that it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to any similar service, and that it is not connected to any of the tokens, projects or people depicted. That notice governs. Nothing on the site should be read as a claim of association with anyone, and if any page appears to suggest otherwise, the notice is the version that counts.

MEMESLY DOES NOT ENDORSE TOKENS, DOES NOT VERIFY CREATORS, AND DOES NOT VOUCH FOR ANYTHING ON THE LAUNCHPAD. ANY MESSAGE CLAIMING THAT WE DO IS FALSE, WHOEVER APPEARS TO HAVE SENT IT.

#Updates and contact

These guidelines will be revised as the site grows, particularly as the launchpad opens up. The date at the top is the version in force, and it is the only one.

Reports, questions, corrections and complaints about this page all go to .

If you are a rights holder who would rather sort something out with an email than a process, that option is open and it is usually the quickest route. Most of what arrives here is settled by somebody adding a label and moving on.