Intellectual property on gitlab.com

Maintained by:

Overview

DMCA - Digital Millennium Copyright Act

GitLab takes the intellectual property rights of others seriously and require that our users do the same. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) established a process for addressing claims of copyright infringement. If you own a copyright or have authority to act on behalf of a copyright owner and want to report a claim that a third party is infringing that material on or through GitLab's services, review the Submitting a DMCA Notice section further below.

Trademark Policy

GitLab can’t adjudicate disputes between third parties, and so we are not in a position to act on trademark reports that require an in-depth trademark analysis or a real-world dispute outside of GitLab. In these situations, rather than contacting GitLab, you may want to reach out directly to the party that you believe is infringing your rights, or seek any resolution in court or by other judicial means.

If you’re sure you want to report content on GitLab that you believe infringes your trademark, please review the Submitting a Trademark Notice section further below.

Namespace Policy

GitLab.com namespaces are available on a first come, first served basis and cannot be reserved. No brand, company, entity, or persons own the rights to any namespace on GitLab.com and may not claim them based on the trademark. Owning the brand "GreatCompany" does not mean owning the namespace "gitlab.com/GreatCompany". Disputes regarding namespaces and trademarks must be resolved by the parties involved. GitLab will never act as arbitrators or intermediaries in these disputes, and will not take any action without the appropriate legal orders.

Account and Group Ownership Disputes

GitLab will not act as an arbitrator of Group or Account ownership disputes. Each user and group owner is responsible for ensuring that they are following best practices for data security.

As GitLab subscriptions are generally business-to-business transactions, in the event that a former employee has revoked company access to a paid group, please contact GitLab Support for recovery options.

Name Squatting Policy

Per the GitLab Terms of Service:

Account name squatting is prohibited by GitLab. Account names on GitLab are administered to users on a first-come, first-serve basis. Accordingly, account names cannot be held or remain inactive for future use.

The GitLab.com Support Team will consider a namespace (user name or group name) to fall under the provisions of this policy when the user has not logged in or otherwise used the namespace for an extended time. For more information, see the Name Squatting section further below.

DMCA

Submitting a Notice

Submitting a DMCA Notice

If you believe that someone is infringing on your copyright as the copyright owner, you can send a DMCA notice to dmca@gitlab.com.

A DMCA notice is a legal document, therefore GitLab requires you to submit a notice in the following format.

A description of the copyrighted work that you claim is being infringed;
A description of the material you claim is infringing and that you want removed or access to which you want disabled, and the URL or other location of that material;
Your name, title (if acting as an agent), address, telephone number, and email address;
The following statement: “I have a good faith belief that the use of the copyrighted material I am complaining of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law (e.g., as a fair use)”;
The following statement: “The information in this notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, I am the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyright or of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed”; and
An electronic or physical signature of the owner of the copyright or a person authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

After your submission to dmca@gitlab.com, you should receive an automated confirmation of receipt.

What happens Next?

Once your request is received, a member of our Trust and Safety Team will verify and process your notice.
Notices with missing or inaccurate information cannot be processed. A member of the Trust and Safety team will reach out to you for more information.
Should we verify that you have submitted the required information, you will receive a confirmation email from our team that your request has been processed.
- If you have not heard from us, you are welcome to send a follow-up email requesting an update.
Valid notices will be forwarded to the reported account owner, allowing them to submit a counter notice or remove the content from gitlab.com
GitLab users, implicated by the notice, have the right to submit a counter-notice. If the counter-notice is deemed valid, we will forward it to you for further action.
For more information on counter complaints, see the Responding to a DMCA notice section on this page.

Responding to a DMCA Notice

Submitting a DMCA Counter Notice

If it is not possible to come to an agreement with the reporting copyright owner, the content owner may submit a DMCA Counter-Notice to dmca@gitlab.com within ten (10) business days of the date of receiving our notice. If we receive a valid counter-complaint, we will email a copy of the notice to the copyright owner.

The Counter complaint is a legal document and must comply with the requirements of the DMCA and must include the following:

Contact Information: Your name, title (if acting as an agent), physical address, email address, and phone number;
Content Identification: A reasonable identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been restricted;
Statement under Perjury: A statement under penalty of perjury that you have "a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.";
Consent to Jurisdiction: A statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your provided address is located, or if your address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which GitLab may be found.
Consent to service of process: A statement that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the original notification or an agent of such person.
Signature: An electronic or physical signature of the owner of the copyright or a person authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

Mitigating Copyright Infringement

Should you receive a gitlab.com DMCA notice for content that is in your control;
1. You can respond to the notice by removing the reported content from gitlab.com.
2. If you believe your content is mistakenly the subject of a DMCA take down request, you have the right to contest the take down request by submitting a counter complaint.
In the event that we do not see that any actions has been taken and no response to the DMCA notice has been received;
1. The reported content will be made private.
  - Depending on where the content is located, access to the group/project can be restricted.
  - Access to the gitlab.com account is restricted.

Trademark Infringement

Submitting a Trademark Infringement Notice

If you’re sure you want to report content on GitLab that you believe infringes your trademark, please provide the following information:

Details of the original trademark (and a description if it's a logo).
A list of the countries in which the trademark is registered.
The registration number(s) of the trademark.
A scanned copy of the trademark registration certificate(s) or screenshot of the registration on the website or database of the applicable national intellectual property office(s).
A declaration of the following statement: "By submitting this notice, I state that I have a good-faith belief that the reported use, in the manner that I have complained of, is not authorised by the intellectual property rights owner, its agent or the law; that the information contained in this notice is accurate; and, under penalty of perjury, that I am authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the intellectual property rights at issue".

You can send this information to dmca@gitlab.com, you should receive an automated confirmation of receipt.

Responding to a Trademark Infringement Request

Should you receive a Trademark take down notice;
- You can respond to the notice by submitting the requested information that proves that you hold Trademark rights to the infringing content.

Mitigating Trademark Infringement

Should you receive a Trademark take down request, you can;
1. Agree to remove the reported content within 24 hours of receiving our notice.

Name Squatting

Requesting a dormant namespace

Specifically:

User namespaces can be reassigned if both of the following are true:

The user's last sign in was at least two years ago.
The user is not the sole owner of any active projects.
Group namespaces can be reassigned if one of the following is true:
- There is no data (no project or project(s) are empty).
- The owner's last sign in was at least two years ago.
- If the namespace contains data, GitLab Support will attempt to contact the owner over a two-week period before reassigning the namespaces. If the namespace contains no data (empty or no projects) and the owner is inactive, the namespace will be released immediately.
- Namespaces associated with unconfirmed accounts over 90 days old are eligible for immediate release. Group namespaces that contain no data and were created more than 6 months ago are likewise eligible for immediate release.

Account and Group ownership disputes should contact GitLab Support to see if namespaces are eligible.