Copyright, intellectual property, and DMCA policy.

This Copyright, Intellectual Property and DMCA Policy applies to HandshakeMD, located at handshakemd.com, and related services operated by shrinkMD Publishing LLC, a Florida limited liability company (“Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

We refer to the website, directory, tools, content, and related services collectively as the “Platform.”

1Respect for intellectual property

The Company respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects Platform users to do the same.

Users must not submit, upload, display, publish, or otherwise use content that infringes another person's:

• copyright;
• trademark;
• publicity rights;
• privacy rights;
• trade secret rights; or
• other intellectual property or proprietary rights.

2Platform owned content

Except for user submitted content and third party materials, the Platform and its original content are owned by or licensed to the Company.

This includes:

• website design;
• page layout;
• software;
• database organization;
• search functionality;
• original written content;
• graphics;
• illustrations;
• icons;
• logos;
• brand elements;
• taxonomy structures;
• compilations;
• tools;
• templates; and
• other original materials.

These materials may be protected by copyright, trademark, trade dress, database, unfair competition, or other laws.

3No implied licence

Access to the Platform does not grant users ownership of Company intellectual property.

Unless expressly permitted, users may not:

• reproduce;
• republish;
• distribute;
• sell;
• licence;
• modify;
• create derivative works from;
• scrape;
• systematically copy; or
• commercially exploit

Company owned content or Platform databases.

4Limited permitted use

Users may access and use the Platform for lawful personal or professional purposes consistent with the Terms of Use.

Reasonable activities are permitted, including:

• viewing professional listings;
• printing a listing for personal referral use;
• sharing a public listing link;
• saving a professional profile through Platform features; or
• using Platform tools as intended.

Every listing carries a printable referral card for exactly this reason. Printing one and faxing it to a colleague is the intended use, not an edge case.

5User submitted content

Healthcare professionals, practices, and authorized representatives may submit content such as:

• biographies;
• headshots;
• practice logos;
• office photographs;
• service descriptions;
• professional credentials;
• referral criteria;
• website links;
• specialty descriptions; and
• other listing information.

Users retain ownership of content they own. Submitting it here changes nothing about who owns it.

6Licence to the Company

By submitting content to the Platform, you grant the Company a non exclusive, worldwide, royalty free, transferable, and sublicensable licence to:

• host;
• store;
• reproduce;
• resize;
• crop;
• format;
• display;
• publish;
• distribute;
• index;
• adapt for technical purposes;
• create thumbnails from; and
• otherwise use

the submitted content as reasonably necessary to operate, promote, improve, and make the Platform available.

This licence does not transfer ownership of your original content to the Company, and it ends when the listing comes down, apart from copies in backups and logs that expire on their own schedule and any record we have to keep for legal reasons. The same licence is set out in the Clinician Listing Agreement.

7Your representations

By submitting content, you represent and warrant that:

• you own the content or have permission to use it;
• you have authority to grant the licence described above;
• the content does not infringe another person's rights;
• the content does not violate confidentiality or privacy obligations;
• the content does not contain patient information submitted unlawfully; and
• publication of the content on the Platform is lawful.

The first of those is confirmed by name when a listing request is sent, and it is one of the three attestations recorded against every acceptance.

8Practice logos and trade marks

If you submit a practice name, logo, trade name, or trademark, you authorize the Company to display it in connection with the applicable professional or practice listing.

The Company does not acquire ownership of a third party trademark merely by displaying it.

Use of a third party mark on the Platform is intended to identify the applicable professional, practice, product, or service, and does not imply endorsement or affiliation beyond the relationship expressly stated.

In the other direction: shrinkMD and shrinQ are registered service marks of Shariq Refai, and HandshakeMD is used as a mark of the Company. Being listed here does not licence a clinician to use the HandshakeMD name or logo in advertising or in any way suggesting endorsement, sponsorship, or certification. Saying truthfully that you are listed on HandshakeMD, and linking to your own listing, is the whole of the permission.

9Publicly available professional information

The Platform displays factual professional information obtained from lawful public sources, principally the National Provider Identifier registry maintained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Facts are not copyrightable. These are facts:

• names;
• addresses;
• professional licences;
• NPIs;
• specialties;
• public practice information; and
• other factual data.

However, particular photographs, biographies, graphics, logos, or original wording may be protected.

The Company distinguishes between public facts and copyrighted expression. That distinction is the single most important operational rule in this document, and section 10 says what it means in practice.

The compilation, meaning the selection, arrangement, freshness dates, and structure of this directory, is the Company's. The underlying facts are not.

10Public does not mean free to copy

The fact that material appears publicly on another website does not mean it is free to copy. This is the mistake that most directories make, and it is made at scale by a script rather than by a person.

The Platform does not republish, and will not republish:

• professional headshots;
• biographies;
• practice photographs;
• logos;
• articles; or
• other original content

merely because the content is publicly accessible online.

An unclaimed listing built from the public registry therefore carries no photograph, no logo, and no biography. Not because we have not got around to it, but because taking those from a practice website would be copying somebody's expression without permission. The listing carries the facts and nothing else until the clinician claims it and sends their own material.

This is enforced in the software rather than left to judgment. The build refuses to publish a listing that carries a photograph, a logo, or a biography without a recorded provenance saying where the right to use it came from, and refuses one on a listing that has not been claimed at all.

Where permission is required, the Company will seek permission, use licensed material, rely on user submitted content, or display factual information in independently written form.

11Copyright complaints

If you believe content on the Platform infringes your copyright, you may submit a written notice to our designated copyright agent. Put the word copyright in the subject line.

Federal law sets out what an effective notice must contain. Please include all six:

• your physical or electronic signature, or that of a person authorized to act for the copyright owner;
• identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, where a single notice covers multiple works at one site, a representative list of them;
• identification of the allegedly infringing material, with information reasonably sufficient to locate it, which in practice means the full web address of the page and a description of the specific photograph, text, or logo on it;
• your name, address, telephone number, and email address;
• a statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
• a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

A notice that names a whole listing without saying which element on it is infringing gives us nothing to act on. Tell us the page and the item.

If your concern is that a listing is wrong about you rather than that it infringes a copyright, this is the slower route. Use the one in section 18 instead.

12DMCA copyright agent

Copyright notices and counter notices may be sent to:

DMCA Agent
shrinkMD Publishing LLC
Operator of HandshakeMD
Email: [email protected]
Northwest Registered Agent LLC, 7901 4th St N Ste 300, St. Petersburg, FL 33702

Email reaches us faster than post and is the route we would rather you used.

Being straight about one thing: this agent is not yet registered with the United States Copyright Office through its online directory of designated agents. The statute requires that registration in addition to publishing the address here, so until it is done, the process on this page is one we follow because it is the right way to handle a complaint, rather than one that gives the Company the statutory protection it is modelled on. That changes nothing about how we will handle your notice.

13Takedown process

On receiving a facially valid copyright notice, the Company may:

• remove or disable access to the identified material;
• notify the user who submitted the material and give them a copy of the notice;
• request additional information;
• preserve records relating to the dispute; or
• take other action reasonably appropriate under applicable law.

Removing a photograph or a logo does not remove a listing. Where the element can be taken out and the rest of the listing is unaffected, that is what happens.

Removal of material does not mean the Company agrees that infringement occurred, and we will say so when we tell the clinician.

14Counter notification

If your content was removed in response to a copyright notice and you believe the removal resulted from mistake or misidentification, you may submit a counter notification.

Federal law sets out what it must contain:

• your physical or electronic signature;
• identification of the material that was removed and the location where it appeared before it was removed;
• a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification; and
• your name, address, and telephone number, together with a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the judicial district in which your address is located, or, if your address is outside the United States, for any judicial district in which the Company may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who gave the original notice or an agent of that person.

That last element is the one people do not expect, and it is worth reading twice. A counter notice consents to being sued in a named court and to accepting service there. It is not a form to fill in casually.

On receiving an effective counter notification we will send a copy to the person who sent the original notice and tell them we will restore the material in 10 to 14 business days. We will then restore it, unless we first receive notice that they have filed an action seeking a court order to keep it down.

15Misrepresentation cuts both ways

Federal law makes a person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing, or that it was removed by mistake, liable for the damages and costs incurred by the other side, including legal fees.

This is worth stating plainly on a directory of named professionals who compete with one another. A takedown notice aimed at a competitor's listing, or at a listing somebody simply dislikes, is not a costless move. We keep the record of every notice and what we did about it, and we will hand it over if a court asks.

16Repeat infringers

Where appropriate and in suitable circumstances, the Company may suspend or terminate users who repeatedly infringe intellectual property rights, and may remove listings or accounts associated with repeated unauthorized use of protected content.

In deciding what is appropriate we may consider:

• the number of notices about the same person or practice;
• whether earlier notices were answered by an effective counter notice;
• whether the same material was reposted after removal;
• whether the conduct appears deliberate; and
• any other relevant circumstance.

A single notice that is answered by a counter notice, or that turns out to be mistaken, does not count against anybody.

17Trademark complaints

If you believe a listing or other content improperly uses your trademark, service mark, trade name, or logo, email [email protected] with the word trademark in the subject line.

Please include:

• the mark at issue;
• the allegedly infringing content;
• the basis for your rights;
• relevant registration information if applicable;
• the specific Platform address;
• your contact information; and
• an explanation of the alleged infringement.

The Company may request additional documentation. There is no statutory notice and counter notice process for trade marks, so these are handled case by case, and we will tell you what we decided and why.

18The Company does not adjudicate trade mark ownership

The Company is not a court or a trademark tribunal.

We may take reasonable interim action where a dispute is credible, but we do not guarantee that we will resolve every trade mark dispute conclusively. Parties may need to resolve ownership or infringement disputes directly or through appropriate legal channels.

19Name and identity disputes

If a person claims that a professional or practice listing improperly uses their:

• name;
• likeness;
• professional identity;
• photograph; or
• business identity,

email [email protected]. We may investigate and request documentation.

Possible actions include:

• correcting the listing;
• removing the disputed content;
• freezing edits;
• transferring listing control;
• suspending the listing; or
• taking no action if the claim is unsupported.

Where a report concerns somebody being listed without their knowledge or consent, the listing comes down first and gets investigated second. No account is needed and there is no form. This is the fastest route for a listing that is simply wrong about you, and it is faster than a copyright notice.

20Photographs

A professional photograph on this Platform must be:

• owned by the submitting party;
• licensed for Platform use; or
• otherwise used with lawful permission.

A photographer may own the copyright in a professional headshot even where the person depicted is the clinician. The fact that a clinician appears in a photograph does not mean the clinician owns the copyright in it.

This catches more people than any other rule here. A headshot taken at a hospital, by an agency, or by a photographer at a conference is usually not the subject's to licence, however much it looks like their property.

21Logos

Practice logos may be protected by:

• copyright;
• trademark; or
• both.

A user who submits a logo represents that they have authority to permit its display here. A logo designed by an agency is frequently licensed for particular uses only, and a website licence is not a licence for everywhere.

22Biographies

Do not copy a professional biography from a third party website unless you own the text or have permission to use it. A biography on a former employer's website usually belongs to that employer.

A professional may provide an original biography directly to the Platform, and that is the route we would rather you used.

The Company may also write an independent factual summary from lawful sources where appropriate. A summary written from facts is not a copy of somebody else's paragraph.

23Automated extraction and scraping

Unless expressly permitted in writing, users may not use automated systems to:

• scrape clinician profiles;
• copy the provider database;
• harvest email addresses;
• reproduce Platform taxonomies;
• systematically extract availability information;
• build a competing directory;
• train a commercial model on substantial portions of Platform content; or
• circumvent technical restrictions on data access.

This restriction is subject to any rights that cannot lawfully be waived.

One thing worth being straight about: no clinician email address appears anywhere on this Platform. The address a listing is confirmed against is never rendered, never in the search index, and never in the structured data, and the build asserts that on every run. There is nothing here to harvest.

24Search engines

Nothing in this policy prohibits ordinary search engine crawling that the Company permits through its technical settings. The Platform is built to be found.

The Company may control search engine access through:

• robots.txt;
• meta tags;
• authentication;
• rate limits;
• API controls; or
• other technical means.

Two things are deliberately excluded from search engines: unclaimed listings, until a clinician claims and confirms one, and any address that would carry a search term. Both are set in robots.txt and both are there for reasons set out in the Privacy Policy and the Verification Standards.

A machine readable summary of the Platform for AI systems and answer engines is published at llms.txt, including what verification does and does not mean. Reading a directory to answer somebody's question is a use we want. Copying the database is not.

25APIs and data licensing

If the Company later provides an API or a licensed data feed, use of that service will be governed by separate terms.

Access to the public website does not grant a right to bulk export or commercially redistribute Platform data.

26Linking to the Platform

You may link to any publicly available page here, and we would rather you did, provided the link does not:

• falsely imply sponsorship;
• misrepresent affiliation;
• use misleading framing;
• unlawfully reproduce protected content; or
• otherwise violate applicable law.

A clinician linking to their own listing from their practice website is expressly welcome.

27Framing and mirroring

Users may not frame, mirror, or reproduce substantial portions of the Platform in a manner that falsely suggests Company content belongs to another service or organization.

28User feedback

If you voluntarily provide:

• suggestions;
• ideas;
• feature requests;
• feedback;
• comments; or
• recommendations

about the Platform, you grant the Company permission to use that feedback without restriction or compensation, unless otherwise agreed in writing.

This does not include confidential patient information or material submitted under a separate confidentiality agreement. Do not send us patient information in a feature request.

29Removal at Company discretion

The Company may remove, restrict, or modify content where we reasonably believe it:

• infringes intellectual property rights;
• violates privacy rights;
• violates publicity rights;
• violates Platform rules;
• creates legal risk; or
• is otherwise inappropriate for the Platform.

30No waiver of Company rights

Failure by the Company to enforce an intellectual property right does not waive that right.

31Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The current version is the one posted here, with the date and version string at the top.

Where the designated agent changes, this page changes on the same day, and the registration with the Copyright Office is updated with it.

32Contact

General intellectual property questions, copyright notices, counter notices, and trade mark complaints all go to the same place. Put copyright, counter notice, or trademark in the subject line so it reaches the right hands.

shrinkMD Publishing LLC
Operator of HandshakeMD
Attention: DMCA Agent
[email protected]
Northwest Registered Agent LLC, 7901 4th St N Ste 300, St. Petersburg, FL 33702

A listing that is wrong about you, or that you did not create, goes to [email protected] instead. That route is faster and needs no legal wording.