Copyright / DMCA Policy

TreeHaous, Inc. (“TreeHaous,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects Users to do the same. This Copyright / DMCA Policy (the “Policy”) describes how to report claimed copyright infringement on the Services and how we respond, consistent with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512. Capitalized terms used but not defined here have the meanings given in the Terms of Service, into which this Policy is incorporated by reference.

1. Scope of This Policy

This Policy applies only to claims that User Content or other material on the Services infringes a copyright. Complaints about other matters — such as harassment, fraud, fair-housing violations, trademark, privacy, right of publicity, or other violations of our Terms or Acceptable Use Policy — are handled under the Acceptable Use Policy and the Content Moderation & Appeals Policy, not this Policy. Listing Data and MLS Content are subject to the applicable MLS rules and data licenses in addition to this Policy; a copyright notice that targets Listing Data or MLS Content is handled under the same § 512 procedure as any other notice, with the additional reconciliation described in Section 5.

2. Designated Copyright Agent

We have designated an agent to receive notifications of claimed copyright infringement. You can reach our Designated Agent at:

Designated Copyright Agent. Name / Title: DMCA Agent. Company: TreeHaous, Inc. Mailing Address: 680 N Lake Shore Dr, Suite 110-2521, Chicago, IL 60611. Email: dmca@treehaous.com. Phone: (815) 620-4899.

Registration is mandatory and must be kept current. The Designated Agent must be registered through the U.S. Copyright Office DMCA Designated Agent Directory. The registration must be renewed periodically; allowing it to lapse forfeits the § 512 safe harbor regardless of the text of this Policy. The contact fields above are items that must match the U.S. Copyright Office directory entry exactly. This contact is for copyright notices only; unrelated inquiries sent here may not receive a response.

3. Filing a Notice of Claimed Infringement

If you believe that material on the Services infringes a copyright you own or are authorized to act for, you may send a written notice to our Designated Agent. To be effective under the DMCA, your notice must include substantially the following:

- A physical or electronic signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright that is allegedly infringed;

- Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple works are covered by a single notice, a representative list of those works;

- Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, with information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material (such as the URL or other specific location on the Services);

- Information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact you, such as your name, mailing 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 notice is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright that is allegedly infringed.

Incomplete notices. If your notice does not substantially comply with these requirements, it may not be effective and we may be unable to act on it. We may forward the notice and the information you provide, including your contact information, to the User who submitted the affected material and to others as appropriate.

4. How We Respond to Notices

Upon receiving a notice that substantially complies with the DMCA, we will respond expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material claimed to be infringing. We will take reasonable steps to notify the affected User that we have removed or disabled access to the material, and we will provide that User with a copy of the notice or its substance so that they may submit a counter-notification if appropriate.

5. Notices Targeting MLS Content and Listing Photographs

A notice may target Listing Data or MLS Content — commonly a listing photograph — that reached the Services through a licensed MLS data feed and that we display under an IDX, VOW, or other MLS data license, rather than material a User uploaded. These notices are processed under the same § 512 takedown procedure as any other notice. We do not delay the statutory takedown pending review of the license: upon a substantially compliant notice, we respond expeditiously to remove or disable access to the identified material, exactly as described in Section 4.

Reconciliation does not delay takedown, and takedown is not a license breach. Separately and after acting on the notice, we reconcile the matter with the applicable MLS data license and our internal handling and escalation procedures before any restoration. Removing or disabling material in response to a notice in order to preserve the safe harbor is a permitted response to a copyright notice and is not, by itself, a breach of any MLS display obligation. Where reconciliation and any counter-notification establish that our display of the material was in fact authorized under the applicable license, the counter-notification path in Section 6 applies, and material may be restored consistent with that Section and the license.

Where the notice concerns material delivered through the MLS feed, the rightsholder or the User submitting a counter-notification may be the listing broker, the listing photographer, the MLS, or another authorized party. Our processing of such a notice does not determine ownership or authorization on the merits; it follows the neutral § 512 process and reconciles licensing separately.

6. Counter-Notification

If you are a User whose material has been removed or disabled and you believe the removal was the result of mistake or misidentification, you may submit a written counter-notification to our Designated Agent. To be effective, your counter-notification must include substantially the following:

- Your physical or electronic signature;

- Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled, and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled;

- 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;

- Your name, mailing address, and telephone number, and 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 we may be found), and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the original notice or that person’s agent.

What happens next. If we receive an effective counter-notification, we may forward it to the person who submitted the original notice and inform them that we may restore the removed material in not less than 10 and not more than 14 business days, unless our Designated Agent first receives notice from that person that they have filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the allegedly infringing activity. We may, in our discretion, restore the material after that period.

7. Removal on Knowledge; No Duty to Monitor

Separate from the formal notice-and-takedown process above, we may remove or disable access to material if we obtain knowledge or awareness of apparent infringement through any means, including our own review or automated signals we may use from time to time. Where we elect to act on such knowledge, we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material. Acting on knowledge we happen to obtain does not create, and is not to be read as creating, any general obligation to monitor User Content or to affirmatively seek out infringing activity. Consistent with 17 U.S.C. § 512(m), eligibility for the safe harbor is not conditioned on monitoring the Services or affirmatively seeking facts indicating infringing activity, and we reserve the right to act on knowledge without assuming any duty to look for it.

8. Repeat-Infringer Policy

We will, in appropriate circumstances and in our discretion, disable and/or terminate the accounts of Users who are determined to be repeat infringers. A “repeat infringer” is a User who has been the subject of more than one valid notice of claimed infringement, or who has otherwise repeatedly infringed copyright. Counting a notice toward repeat-infringer status does not require us to adjudicate the underlying claim on its merits; a notice that substantially complies with the DMCA may be counted whether or not we make any determination of infringement. We may also limit access or take other action against Users who infringe regardless of whether they are repeat infringers.

Reasonable implementation in practice. Because the safe harbor requires this Policy to be reasonably implemented and not merely stated, we maintain internal tracking of copyright notices and related account actions and an escalation workflow for considering account-level action against repeat infringers. We retain the discretion described above and the “appropriate circumstances” standard; we do not commit to a fixed number of notices, a numeric threshold, or a mandatory sequence of steps before acting.

9. Misrepresentations

Under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material is infringing, or that material was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, may be liable for damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees. Please consider whether the use you are reporting may be authorized or protected (for example, by fair use) before submitting a notice, and submit a counter-notification only if you have a good-faith belief that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification.

Submitting a notice or counter-notification in bad faith, or that knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing or was wrongly removed, also violates the Acceptable Use Policy’s prohibitions on fraud and misrepresentation and may result in action against your account under that Policy, in addition to any liability under Section 512(f).

10. Relationship to Other Policies

This Policy governs copyright complaints only. Actions we take under this Policy are separate from the discretionary content moderation described in the Content Moderation & Appeals Policy. A User whose material is removed under this Policy should use the DMCA counter-notification process in Section 6, not the general moderation appeals process, to seek restoration. Nothing in this Policy limits our rights or remedies under the Terms or applicable law, and our removal of material under this Policy does not make us the publisher of any User Content.

Non-copyright intellectual-property and related complaints. Complaints of trademark infringement, right-of-publicity violations, and other non-copyright intellectual-property or related claims are not handled under this Policy; they are addressed under the Acceptable Use Policy and the Content Moderation & Appeals Policy.

11. Transparency (Discretionary)

In addition to forwarding a notice or its substance to the affected User as described above, we may, as a discretionary practice and subject to applicable law, publish or transmit notices or counter-notifications, or their substance (such as to a third-party transparency repository). This is optional; nothing in this Section commits us to publish, transmit, or report any notice, on any schedule, and we may redact or withhold information as appropriate or as required by law.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the updated Policy with a new “Last Updated” date and, where appropriate, provide additional notice. The current Designated Agent information will be maintained here and in the U.S. Copyright Office directory, and the registration will be kept current as described in Section 2.