Privacy Policy

Intellectual Ventures Online Privacy Policy

Effective January 1, 2020

This Privacy Statement describes the types of information Intellectual Ventures (“IV”, “we,” or “us”) collects through our websites, including the website at www.intellectualventures.com (our “Sites”), as well as all related websites, networks, applications, and other services provided by us and on which a link to this Privacy Statement is displayed (collectively, together with the Sites, our “Offerings”). This Privacy Statement describes the information that we gather from you on our Offerings, how we use and disclose such information, and the steps we take to protect such information.

Information We Collect on our Offerings

  • User-provided Information. When you use our Offerings, we may collect information about you, including your name, contact information, geographic area, or preferences and we may link this information with other information about you. You may provide us with information in various ways through our Offerings. For example, you provide us with information when you register to use features of our Offerings, use our Offerings, request information from us, or send us customer service-related requests. 

  • Automatically Collected Information. When you use our Offerings, we may collect certain information automatically from your device, including information like your IP address, device type, unique device identification numbers, browser-type, broad geographic location (by use of GPS or other geolocation features of your device) and other technical information. We may also collect information about how your device has interacted with our Offerings including our Sites, including the pages accessed and links clicked. Some of this information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technology.

  • Third Party Buttons. We may implement third party buttons (such as Facebook “like” or “share” buttons) that may function as web beacons even when you do not interact with the button. Information collected through third-party web beacons and buttons is collected directly by these third parties, not by Intellectual Ventures. Information collected by a third party in this manner is subject to that third party’s own data collection, use, and disclosure policies.

 
How We Use the Information We Collect

We use information we collect on or through our Offerings in a variety of ways in providing our Offerings and operating our business, including the following:

  • We use the information that we collect on or through our Offerings to:
    • operate, maintain, enhance and provide all features of our Offerings,
    • provide services and information that you request,
    • respond to comments and questions and otherwise to provide support to users,
    • understand and analyze the usage trends and preferences of our users,
    • improve our Offerings, and
    • to develop new products, services, features, and functionality.
  • We may use your email address or other contact information we collect to:
    • contact you for administrative purposes such as customer service or
    • send communications, including updates on promotions and events, relating to products and services offered by us and by third parties.
  • We may use cookies and automatically collected information.
 
When We Disclose Information

Except as described in this Privacy Statement, we will not disclose information about you that we collect on or through our Offerings to third parties without your consent. We may disclose information to third parties if you consent to us doing so, as well as in the following circumstances:

  • Any information that you voluntarily choose to include in a publicly accessible area of the Sites or any of our Offerings will be available to anyone who has access to that content, including other users.
  • We work with vendors to provide website, application development, hosting, maintenance, sales enablement and other services for us. These vendors may have access to or process information about you as part of providing those services for us. Generally, we limit the information provided to these vendors to that which is reasonably necessary for them to perform their functions, and we require them to agree to maintain the confidentiality of such information.
  • We may disclose your information if required to do so by any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary to comply with applicable law or regulation, in response to a court order, judicial or other government subpoena or warrant, or to otherwise cooperate with law enforcement or other governmental agencies.
  • We also reserve the right to disclose your information that we believe, in good faith, is appropriate or necessary to (i) take precautions against liability, (ii) detect security incidents and protect ourselves or others from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful uses or activity, (iii) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations, (iv) protect the security or integrity of our Offerings and any facilities or equipment used to make our Offerings available, or (v) protect our property or other legal rights (including, but not limited to, enforcement of our agreements), or the rights, property, or safety of others.
  • Information about our users may be disclosed and otherwise transferred to an acquirer, successor, or assignee as part of any merger, acquisition, debt financing, sale of assets, or similar transaction, or in the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership in which information is transferred to one or more third parties as one of our business assets in which case the acquirer, successor or assignee will use your personal information in line with this Privacy Statement.
  • We may make certain aggregated, automatically-collected, or otherwise non-personal information available to third parties for various purposes, including (i) compliance with various reporting obligations; (ii) for business or marketing purposes; or (iii) to assist such parties in understanding our users’ interests, habits, and usage patterns for certain programs, content, services, advertisements, promotions, and/or functionality available through our Offerings.
 
Your Choices

We will provide you with reasonable access to information about you in accordance with applicable laws, including by providing you with online access and the opportunity to update your information. To protect your privacy and security, we may take steps to verify your identity before granting access or making changes to information you have provided us. To request access to, or correction, deletion or removal of, information about you, please contact us at PrivacyCompliance@intven.com. While we will make reasonable efforts to accommodate your request, we also reserve the right to reject such access requests or to impose certain restrictions and requirements on such requests, if required or permitted by applicable law. Please note that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases within a reasonable period of time, we may retain all information you submit for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.

Third-Party Services

Our Offerings may contain features or links to websites and services provided by third parties. Any information you provide on third-party sites or services is provided directly to the operators of such services and is subject to those operators’ policies, if any, governing privacy and security, even if accessed through our Offerings. We are not responsible for the content or privacy and security practices and policies of third-party sites or services to which links or access are provided through our Offerings. We encourage you to learn about third parties’ privacy and security policies before providing them with information.

Data Security

We implement and maintain reasonable physical, managerial, and technical safeguards that are designed to improve the integrity and security of information that we collect, process and maintain. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information. Please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot and do not guarantee that your information will not be accessed, viewed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards.

International Visitors

Our Offerings are hosted in the United States. If you choose to use our Offerings from the European Union or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, then please note that you are transferring your personal information outside of those regions to the United States for storage and processing.

We may transfer and process your personal information in countries other than the country in which you are resident in connection with storage and processing of data, fulfilling your requests, and operating and providing our Offerings. These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country. Specifically, our Offerings are hosted in the United States, and our subsidiaries and third-party service providers and partners operate in the United States. However, we have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Statement. We have implemented the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of personal information between our subsidiaries, which require all subsidiaries to protect personal information they process from the EEA in accordance with European Union data protection law. We have implemented similar appropriate safeguards with our third-party service providers and partners.

Changes and Updates to this Privacy Statement

Please revisit this page periodically to stay aware of any changes to this Privacy Statement, which we may update from time to time. If we modify this Privacy Statement, we will make it available through our Offerings, and indicate the date of the latest revision. In the event that the modifications materially alter your rights or obligations hereunder, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you of the change. For example, we may send a message to your email address, if we have one on file, or generate a pop-up or similar notification when you access one of our Offerings for the first time after such material changes are made.

Summary of Information Practices

The following table summarizes our personal information collection, use, and sharing practices in the preceding 12 months since we last updated this Policy.  As reflected in this table, we may share your personal information with a variety of outside entities.

  • Category of Personal Information Collected: Identifiers
    • Examples: Full name, email address, phone number, account login
    • Categories of Sources: You
    • Commercial/Business Purpose for Collection: Maintaining and servicing accounts; providing customer service; processing or fulfilling orders and transactions; marketing and advertising; analytics regarding use of Offerings; communications with you at your request
    • Categories of Vendors (including third parties and service providers) with Whom Personal Information is Shared: IT vendors, cloud computing providers, database providers, customer service vendors and other service providers that need access to such information to perform services for us, data analytics providers, ad networks, ad tech vendors, social networks, and other marketing and advertising vendors
  • Category of Personal Information Collected: Unique identifiers or personal identifiers
    • Examples: IP address, online identifiers, device ID
    • Categories of Sources: Your device used to access our Sites, and our and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies on our Sites
    • Commercial/Business Purpose for Collection: Maintaining and servicing accounts; marketing and advertising; analytics regarding use of Offerings
    • Categories of Vendors (including third parties and service providers) with Whom Personal Information is Shared: IT vendors, cloud computing providers, database providers, customer service vendors and other service providers that need access to such information to perform services for us, data analytics providers, ad networks, ad tech vendors, social networks, and other marketing and advertising vendors
  • Category of Personal Information Collected: Internet and other network activity
    • Examples: Browser type and other technical information, pages visited
    • Categories of Sources: Your device used to access our Sites
    • Commercial/Business Purpose for Collection: Analytics regarding use of our Sites; marketing and advertising; providing, maintaining our Offerings; internal research
    • Categories of Vendors (including third parties and service providers) with Whom Personal Information is Shared:  IT vendors, cloud computing providers, database providers, customer service vendors and other service providers that need access to such information to perform services for us, data analytics providers, ad networks, ad tech vendors, social networks, and other marketing and advertising vendors
  • Category of Personal Information Collected: Geolocation data
    • Examples: Location of device
    • Categories of Sources: Your device used to access our Sites
    • Commercial/Business Purpose for Collection: Providing, maintaining and improving our Offerings; marketing and advertising; analytics regarding use of our Sites; internal research
    • Categories of Vendors (including third parties and service providers) with Whom Personal Information is Shared:  IT vendors, cloud computing providers, database providers, customer service vendors and other service providers that need access to such information to perform services for us, data analytics providers, ad networks, ad tech vendors, social networks, and other marketing and advertising vendors
  • Category of Personal Information Collected: Professional or employment-related information
    • Examples: Job history
    • Categories of Sources: You
    • Commercial/Business Purpose for Collection: Process and evaluate employment applications and administrative purposes
    • Categories of Vendors (including third parties and service providers) with Whom Personal Information is Shared: Service providers such as HR vendors and others as necessary to provide services to us
       
Your California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident, you have the right to know what personal information we collect, use, disclose or sell about you under the CCPA. Additionally, you have the right to access and delete your personal information. 

To exercise these privacy rights and choices, please follow the instructions below:

  • How to request access to your personal information: You may request access to your personal information twice in a 12-month period. To do so, please complete the webform in the Intellectual Ventures Privacy Rights Portal, email us at PrivacyCompliance@intven.com with the subject heading “California Privacy Rights,” or call 1-844-418-1566. Account holders can request access to their personal information at any time by logging into their accounts on the Site. In response, we will produce an Access Report detailing the personal information we have collected, disclosed, and/or sold about you. This Access Report will be delivered by mail or electronically at your request.  Note, we may not always be able to fully address your request, for example, if it would impact the duty of confidentiality we owe to others, or if we are legally entitled to deal with the request in a different way. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by the California Privacy Rights requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response.
  • How to request deletion of your personal information: You may request that we delete the personal information it has collected and/or maintained about you. To do so, please complete the webform in Intellectual Ventures Privacy Rights Portal, email us at PrivacyCompliance@intven.com, or call 1-844-418-1566. Note, we may need to retain certain personal information as permitted by law, such as to complete the transaction for which the personal information was collected, provide a requested good or service, detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal activities, comply with legal obligations or to enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with your expectations or lawful within the context in which you provided the information.

We reserve the right to charge a fee where permitted by law, for instance, if your request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

Verification: Please note, we will take steps to verify your identity before fulfilling any of the above requests. If you maintain an account with us, we will verify your identity through existing authentication practices for the account (e.g., login and password). If you are not a registered member, we will verify your identity by matching two or three data points that you provide with data points that we maintain and have determined to be reliable for the purposes of verification (e.g., browser or device ID).

Authorized Agents: Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your or your minor child’s personal information.  In order to designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf, you must provide written proof that you have consented to this designation unless the agent has power of attorney pursuant to California Probate Code sections 4000-4465. You must also verify your identity directly with us by providing a copy of your government issued identification.
Response Timing and Format: If you are an Intellectual Ventures customer with an online account, we will deliver our written response to that account online. If you are not an Intellectual Ventures customer or do not have an online account, we will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your preference. The response will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable.  

Anti-Discrimination Right: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. But note that some of the functionality and features available to you may change or no longer be available to you upon deletion of your personal information or opt-out of sale of your personal information. 

We do not sell your personal information for money, but we use cookies and similar technologies. Please see our Cookie Policy regarding our cookie usage. 

We do not and will not sell the personal information of minors under 16 years of age without affirmative authorization.

Your EEA Privacy Rights

If you are a visitor/customer located in the European Economic Area ("EEA"), Intellectual Ventures is the data controller of your personal information.  If you have any GDPR-related inquiries or issues regarding data protection practices, related rights or other, please contact PrivacyCompliance@intven.com.

Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent to do so, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you.

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information). Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.

You have the following rights:

  • If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, see 'Your Choices' above.
  • You can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. To exercise these rights email PrivacyCompliance@intven.com.
  • If we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
  • You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. Contact details for data protection authorities in the EEA, Switzerland and certain non-European countries (including the US and Canada) are available here.

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements). In line with our Records Management Policy, when we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives, then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible).

Our Contact Information

Please contact us with any questions or comments about this Privacy Statement, your Information, our use and disclosure practices, or your consent choices by email at PrivacyCompliance@intven.com.

You can also contact us using the information provided here:

Intellectual Ventures

3150 139th Ave SE Building 4, Bellevue, WA 98005, United States

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