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TRUETOTAL · LEGAL & TRANSPARENCY

Intellectual Property Policy

EFFECTIVE 3 AUGUST 2026

What we own, what you are welcome to use, and how to raise it with us if you believe something here belongs to you. We take other people’s rights seriously — it would be incoherent not to, given how much of this service depends on using data properly.

⚠ NOT LEGAL ADVICE
This document was drafted in-house to state TrueTotal’s actual practices plainly. It is not legal advice and has not been reviewed by qualified counsel. Before TrueTotal takes commission or trades, a solicitor qualified in Ireland should review and adapt it.
QUOTING US — THE SHORT ANSWER
You are welcome to quote a TrueTotal figure or a short passage in journalism, research or discussion, provided you credit TrueTotal, link to the page, and keep the figure’s date and confidence grade with it. That last condition is not decoration: a number stripped of its provenance stops being the honest thing we published.

What we own

  • The TrueTotal name and logo, and the visual identity of this site.
  • The site itself — its design, layout, code, interfaces and copy.
  • Our methodology — the model by which a true total is computed, including its structure and weighting.
  • Our compilations and computed outputs — the selection and arrangement of the dataset, and the figures our engine produces, protected by copyright and database rights.

What we do not own

Underlying facts are nobody’s property: a statutory VAT rate, a manufacturer’s stated price, an official emissions figure. We claim no ownership of those. Our rights sit in the selection, computation and presentation built on top of them.

Third-party names, logos, trade marks and product imagery belong to their owners and appear here for identification only. Their presence is not endorsement in either direction. Product photography is used only where a licensed feed or agreement permits it — see Sources & Data Policy.

What you may do

  • Use the site for your own purchasing decisions and research.
  • Link to any page freely. No permission needed, and please do — deep links are welcome.
  • Quote figures or short extracts with credit, a link, and the date and confidence grade intact.
  • Cite our methodology in academic or journalistic work.

What you may not do without permission

  • Bulk-extract or scrape the site, or reproduce a substantial part of the dataset. Database rights apply to systematic extraction even where individual facts are free.
  • Build a competing product from our data or our computed figures.
  • Republish figures without their provenance, or present them as your own analysis.
  • Use our name or logo in a way that implies endorsement, partnership or affiliation.
  • Copy the site’s design or code, or remove proprietary notices.

Requesting permission

For anything beyond the permitted uses — a licence, a data partnership, a commercial reuse, an API arrangement — email legal@truetotalcalculator.com with what you want to use, how, and for how long. We are pragmatic, especially with researchers, educators and journalists.

Reporting an infringement

If you believe material on TrueTotal infringes your copyright, trade mark or database right, contact legal@truetotalcalculator.com. Please include:

  • your name and contact details, and whether you are the rights-holder or acting for them;
  • identification of the work you say has been infringed;
  • the URL(s) on TrueTotal where the material appears;
  • a statement of your good-faith belief that the use is not authorised;
  • a statement that the information you have given is accurate.

What we do: we acknowledge within two working days, and where a claim is credible we remove or suspend the material while we review rather than leaving it up during the argument. If we conclude the use was permitted, we will explain why and restore it. We also accept counter-notices from anyone whose material has been removed.

If we are using your data or images

Partners sometimes change what their terms permit. If you are a retailer, operator or manufacturer and we are using your feed, imagery or content beyond what you allow, tell us at legal@truetotalcalculator.com — we will remove it promptly and fix the ingestion at source, not just the symptom. We would rather show a data panel than an image we lack the right to display.

Our marks

“TrueTotal”, the TrueTotal logo and the True Cost badge are our trade marks. The badge in particular may not be reproduced by a seller to suggest that TrueTotal has verified or endorsed their product — that would misrepresent the one thing the badge is for. Editorial and journalistic use of the marks to refer to us is fine.

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