Copyright Policy

If you believe that material available on our sites, including those hosted at WordPress.com, infringes on your copyright(s), please notify us by submitting a copyright infringement notice. After we receive a valid and complete notice, we will investigate, remove the material, and make a good faith attempt to contact the user who uploaded the material, via email. Learn more about our process here.

Please note that we are unable to process notices that refer to sites hosted on third-party servers that use self-hosted WordPress.org software. Please refer to this page for more information on the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

WordPress.com is a publishing platform where site owners often use copyrighted materials in commentary or journalism, or transform the materials into something original. As such, before submitting a notice, it’s important to consider whether the material used falls under fair use. If you are not sure whether material located on a WordPress.com site infringes on your copyright, or if it is subject to fair use protections, you should first consider seeking legal advice.

You may be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that material or activity infringes on your copyright. We have and will highlight such abuses and seek to collect those damages.

Your notice will be forwarded to the party that made the material available, and also may be sent to third parties such as LumenDatabase.org. A note will also be placed on the site in question detailing the name of the copyright owner who submitted the notice. In addition, you are required to consider the possible fair use implications, as a result of Lenz v. Universal. We reserve the right to challenge abuses of this process, and your use of this form does not waive that right.

Please follow these steps to file a notice:

1. Verify that the site in question is hosted by Automattic. We have no control over sites that say “Powered by WordPress.” Those sites use the open source WordPress.org software and are not hosted by us. Please contact the appropriate web host with complaints.
2. Contact the site owner directly. Go to the post in question and leave a comment with your complaint to see if the matter can be resolved directly between you and the site owner. If commenting isn’t currently enabled on the site, you may wish to check if the site owner has included a contact form which you can use to reach out.
3. Send your complaint to our designated agent via the form below, if the issue cannot be resolved directly with the site owner.

We have a policy to terminate users and/or sites that we consider to be repeat infringers. Although we won’t share the specifics of our repeat infringer policy (we don’t want anyone to game the system, after all), we believe that it strikes the right balance: it protects the rights of copyright owners and protects legitimate users from wrongful termination. Please note that notices that are successfully countered, rejected on fair use grounds, or deemed to be fraudulent are not counted against a user or site.

First Name

Last Name

Company Name

Address

City

State/Region/Province

Country

Zip / Postal Code

Phone Number

Email Address

Name of Copyright holder (either yourself or who you represent)

Location (URL) of the unauthorized material on a WordPress.com site (NOT simply the primary URL of the site - example.wordpress.com; you must provide the full and exact permalink of the post, page, or media file where the content appears. We ask you to please submit notices for only one site at a time.

Please describe the copyrighted work so that it may be easily identified

Location of copyrighted work (where your original material is located, not the offending material at WordPress.com)

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
(Please note that you may be liable for damages if you “knowingly materially misrepresent” your copyrights – and we may seek to collect those damages. Fair use should also be taken into consideration.)

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

I acknowledge that a copy of this infringement notice and any correspondence related to it, including any contact information I provided above (address, telephone number, and email address), will be forwarded to the user who uploaded the content at issue. I also acknowledge that a note may be placed on the site in question detailing the name of the copyright owner who submitted the takedown notice.

Signature (typing your full name will act as your digital signature, which is legally binding)

If you’d prefer not to use our automated form, you can send your complaint to our designated agent:

Designated Copyright Agent
Automattic Inc.
60 29th Street #343
San Francisco, CA 94110

Phone: (877) 273-8550
Fax: (415) 840-0710

You must include the following:

A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf;
An identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
A description of the nature and exact location of the material that you claim to infringe your copyright, in sufficient detail to permit Automattic to find and positively identify that material. For example we require a link to the specific post (not just the name of the blog) that contains the material and a description of which specific portion of the post – an image, a link, the text, etc. your complaint refers to;
Your name, address, telephone number and email address;
A statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.