Stripe’s Restricted Business Intellectual Property Notice Process

Last updated: October 29, 2020

By registering with Stripe, businesses confirm that they will not use Stripe Services (as defined here) in connection with certain businesses or business activities. We've outlined those on our Restricted Businesses page. One type of restricted activity is the sale of any good or service that infringes the trademark, copyright, or other intellectual property ("IP") rights of any third party. Stripe understands that the protection of IP is important to our mission to increase the GDP of the internet, and we take claims of IP infringement seriously.To that end, if you are an IP owner (or an authorized representative of an IP owner), and you have a good-faith belief that a business is using Stripe Services in connection with the sale of goods or services that infringe your IP rights, please let us know by filling out this notice ("IP Notice") and sending it to us by email to [email protected]. While we will consider and review any complete IP Notice submitted to us through that process, unfortunately we can't do that for other communications that are submitted to us in other ways, or that are incomplete.Before you submit your IP Notice to us, we'd ask that you consider several points:

  • Does the business at issue have its own IP notice process? If so, we'd ask that you use that first, and include with your IP Notice to us any documentation that you submitted to the business directly notifying them of the allegedly infringing goods or services.
  • Are you sure that the business in question is using Stripe? Often businesses will claim to use Stripe that are not in fact using our Services. Moreover, it is not uncommon that references to Stripe will remain visible in a website's source code long after a business is no longer using Stripe. For that reason, we ask that you please include in your IP Notice any evidence that suggests that the business is currently using Stripe Services. Successful test purchases are encouraged (but not required), as evidence of a test purchase can be extremely helpful in that regard. That said, please do not include card information as part of your IP Notice.
  • Is the business using Stripe Services in connection with the sale or distribution of specific infringing goods or services (such as infringing movies or software)? Or does your IP Notice allege that some aspect of the business overall (such as its name, its logo, its website design, etc.) is infringing? If the latter, we'd encourage you to resolve your dispute directly with the business: as a provider of economic infrastructure, Stripe is not in a position to mediate those types of IP disputes.
  • Is this the right forum? In other words: does your notice allege that a business is using Stripe Services in connection with the sale of goods or services that infringe IP rights? Or does it allege something else? By way of example, please do not use this process to notify us about: 1) other (non-IP) alleged violations of our Restricted Business terms; 2) instances where you allege that Stripe itself is infringing your IP; or 3) instances where you allege that material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by Stripe or one of our affiliated companies allegedly infringes your copyright (please contact our DMCA Agent for that: DMCA Agent; Stripe, Inc.; 354 Oyster Point Boulevard, South San Francisco, California, 94080; phone: 628-250-1970; email: [email protected]).

Once we receive a complete IP Notice, we will consider and review the allegations in it, and will let you know if we need any more information. Several points to keep in mind as we do that:

  • Please do not submit multiple notices on the same allegedly infringing goods or services, as doing so could slow down our review.
  • Please understand that in our role as a provider of economic infrastructure, we do not take our supportability decisions lightly, and will need to make sure that any supportability decision we make is rigorously reviewed and factually sound.
  • Please be aware that as part of our investigation we may share the IP Notice with the allegedly infringing business.

Following our review of your IP Notice, we will decide whether the business remains eligible to use the Stripe Services. But note: we cannot "take down" or remove any allegedly infringing offerings of goods or services of the business. All we can do is continue (or not) to provide our payment processing and related Services to the business --- which means that the "result" of our investigation into an IP Notice may not be visible in many respects to the outside world. While we will try to keep you informed of the status of our review of your IP Notice, the most that we will likely be able to convey is whether Stripe Services are (or are not) currently being used to support the ongoing sale of the specific goods or services that were the subject of your IP Notice.