RateTea Copyright Notice

Unless otherwise stated, and excluding copyleft material (noted where it is used on the site), commercial descriptions, images, and trademarks from other companies, all material on this site is copyright Merit Exchange LLC, the company that manages RateTea. In this notice, "we" and "our" refer to Merit Exchange LLC.

Exceptions

Our rss feed icon is adapted from Perishable Press. Our region maps, unless otherwise noted, are copyrighted original works adapted from public domain maps and geographic data. Tea company and brand logos and social media logos or icons are trademarks and/or copyrighted works of the companies they refer to.

Images of teas, packaging, and logos

RateTea uses a mix of images provided by tea companies, users, and other individuals. These images contain a mix of works we own the copyright on, images available under public domain material or copyleft licenses, and images where the copyright holder has granted us permission to use the work on our site. When in doubt, assume that each image is copyrighted by the person or organization it originated from.

We use images of both product packaging and loose-leaf tea, under fair use for the purpose of comment and criticism. Such images are included both in order to help users correctly identify each individual tea, and to aid in or provide a reference for commentary on the tea's packaging, the company's marketing, and/or the appearance of loose-leaf tea. Nearly all product images on our site are copyrighted, and in most cases, we do not own the copyright so cannot grant you permission to use them.

Commercial descriptions, and trademarks

To aid reviewers in identifying and reviewing teas, RateTea includes commercial descriptions and brewing instructions for teas when such material is available. In some cases, these descriptions have been directly entered by companies themselves; when we have entered this data ourselves, these descriptions are used under fair use for the purpose of comment and criticism: an important aspect of rating and reviewing a tea involves assessing (a) the degree to which it lives up to its commercial description and (b) whether or not one is pleased with the provided brewing instructions.

If you are the copyright holder for material used in commercial description and have concerns about copyright infringement, inaccurate portrayal of your products, or wish for us to change our listings for the commercial description and brewing instructions of any of your products for any reason, we will gladly do so upon your request, so long as your request is honest and congruous with the way your product is marketed in other media: it is our desire to portray the commercial description as accurately as possible according to each company's wishes and the space constraints of our site (we truncate or only include excerpts from long descriptions).

These commercial descriptions and some of the brewing instructions listed on our website have been obtained from various sources, including written material on packaging, websites, catalogs, and other promotional materials originating from tea companies. When in doubt, assume this material is copyrighted by the companies it originated from.

Trademarks

RateTea, RateTea.net, and RateTea.com are trademarks owned by Merit Exchange LLC and used to refer to this site. RateTea and RateTea.net have been in use since the site's launch, Sep. 18, 2009, and RateTea.com began being used when Merit Exchange LLC acquired this domain on Dec. 16, 2011, at which point RateTea.net started to be phased out.

The names of some teas are registered trademarks belonging to the companies that market them. While RateTea sometimes labels these teas with the ® or ™ symbols, we may have omitted this symbol, especially when we obtained the name of the tea from a company source that also omitted this symbol. When in doubt, check with the company to see whether or not the name of a tea is trademarked before using it in a way that could infringe on trademark rights.

Users retain rights to their ratings and reviews

All people submitting ratings and reviews retain the rights to reuse or republish their own submissions in any way they so desire. Unless otherwise noted, assume all user-submitted material is copyrighted.

Obtaining permission to use copyrighted content

You must obtain explicit written consent from RateTea / Merit Exchange LLC before using any copyrighted material from this website for any purpose beyond that permitted as fair use.

We cannot grant permission to use any content for which we do not own the copyright, such as commercial descriptions or images obtained from tea companies.

To obtain permission to re-use material posted by our users, you can contact us or contact those individuals indepedently.