Intellectual Property Policy

1. Introduction

This Intellectual Property Policy ("Policy") establishes SWAPN’s principles for the ownership, protection, permitted use, and licensing of its intellectual property. It applies to all materials made available through SWAPN’s websites, consulting engagements, research publications, digital platforms, software products, datasets, reports, documentation, visual assets, and associated business operations (collectively, the "SWAPN Materials"). Capitalized terms used throughout this Policy carry the same meaning wherever they appear.

By accessing or using SWAPN’s websites, products, or services, you acknowledge and agree to respect the intellectual property rights described in this Policy. This Policy is a statement of SWAPN’s ownership and permitted-use principles; it does not itself grant any license, and it does not modify the specific rights and obligations set out in a signed client agreement, software license, or other written contract, which will govern in the event of any conflict with this Policy.

2. Ownership of Intellectual Property

Unless otherwise stated in writing, all intellectual property displayed, published, distributed, or otherwise made available by SWAPN is the exclusive property of SWAPN or its licensors, and is protected under applicable copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent, and other intellectual property laws. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Company name, branding, logos, product names, taglines, and visual identity (trademarks and brand assets)
• Website design, layouts, graphics, icons, and illustrations (copyrighted works)
• Technical reports, research papers, proposals, publications, and presentations (copyrighted works)
• Consulting methodologies, analytical frameworks, assessment models, and operational processes developed by SWAPN independent of any single engagement (proprietary methodologies, addressed further in Section 5)
• Software applications, digital platforms, dashboards, application programming interfaces, and supporting technical documentation (proprietary software, addressed further in Section 6)
• Source code, object code, system architecture, algorithms, and software design
• Databases, datasets, data models, and data schemas compiled, curated, or generated by SWAPN
• Original written content, documentation, and internal or external publications
• Proprietary research outputs and internally developed intellectual assets
• Confidential know-how and trade secrets, including undisclosed techniques, processes, formulae, models, calibration data, and business or technical information that derives value from not being generally known
• Inventions, technical innovations, and processes that are patented, patent-pending, or held as unpatented proprietary innovations
• Internal operational procedures and business documentation

These categories are distinct forms of intellectual property, each protected on different legal bases and for different durations. Copyright protects the particular expression of a work (such as the text of a report or the code of a software application); trademarks protect the names, marks, and branding used to identify SWAPN and its offerings in commerce; trade secrets and confidential know-how protect valuable information precisely because it is not disclosed; and patents and patent-pending technologies protect specific claimed inventions, whether or not those inventions have been publicly described in general terms. A single deliverable may embody more than one of these protections simultaneously—for example, a report may be protected by copyright as a written work while also describing a methodology protected as confidential know-how or trade secret, and referencing an underlying technology that is separately the subject of a pending patent application.

Certain proprietary software products developed and operated by SWAPN, including the Strategic Air Quality Informatics Platform (SAQIP), are subject to additional product-specific documentation, operational policies, and service agreements where applicable, which supplement and take precedence over this Policy for matters they specifically address.

Intellectual property created during the course of a consulting engagement remains subject to the terms of the applicable agreement between SWAPN and the respective client. Ownership arrangements for engagement-specific deliverables may be defined separately within that agreement. Absent an express written assignment in such an agreement, SWAPN retains ownership of its pre-existing intellectual property, including any proprietary methodologies, software, tools, templates, and know-how used to produce a deliverable; a client’s ownership of, or license to, a specific consulting deliverable does not extend to the underlying methodology, tool, or technology used to create it. This distinction between engagement deliverables and underlying methodologies is addressed further in Section 5.

Neither the publication, delivery, presentation, or other disclosure of any SWAPN Materials, nor a client’s or third party’s access to or receipt of such materials, shall be construed as an assignment, transfer, waiver, dedication to the public, or abandonment of any ownership right, patent right, trade secret, or other intellectual property right held by SWAPN, whether by implication, estoppel, or otherwise. No provision of this Policy, and no act of making SWAPN Materials publicly available, transfers ownership of any SWAPN intellectual property to another party. Any transfer or assignment of SWAPN intellectual property is valid only if made through a separate written agreement signed by an authorized representative of SWAPN that expressly states the intent to transfer or assign such rights.

3. Copyright

All original written, visual, and digital content published by SWAPN—including reports, research papers, illustrations, website content, and documentation—is protected by applicable copyright laws as an original work of authorship. Copyright protects the specific expression of this content; it exists independently of, and in addition to, any trademark rights in SWAPN’s branding (Section 4), any trade secret or know-how protection in its methodologies (Section 5), and any patent rights in its underlying technologies (Section 6). Unless otherwise permitted by law or expressly authorized in writing, no copyrighted content may be copied, reproduced, modified, translated, distributed, republished, displayed, publicly performed, or incorporated into other works—including for the purpose of training, fine-tuning, or evaluating any artificial intelligence or machine learning model—without SWAPN’s prior written permission. This restriction applies regardless of whether the copying is performed manually or through automated means, including scraping, crawling, indexing, or bulk downloading tools not expressly authorized by SWAPN.

Limited quotation for academic, research, journalistic, or educational purposes is generally permitted where appropriate attribution is provided, the quotation is proportionate to that purpose, and the material is not altered or presented in a misleading manner. This limited allowance does not extend to commercial use, to systematic or bulk reproduction, or to use of the content to develop a competing product, service, or dataset.

4. Trademarks and Brand Identity

SWAPN’s name, logos, product names (including SAQIP™), visual identity, taglines, and other distinctive brand elements used to identify SWAPN and its offerings in commerce are valuable trademarks and business assets of SWAPN, whether or not formally registered in a given jurisdiction. Trademark rights are separate from copyright: they protect the source-identifying function of a name or mark, not the artistic expression of a particular design. Third-party trademarks, service marks, logos, or branding that may appear on SWAPN websites for identification, attribution, or interoperability purposes remain the property of their respective owners, as further described in Section 9.

Unauthorized use of SWAPN’s trademarks or brand identity—including reproduction, modification, imitation, use as a metatag or search keyword, or use in a manner that may imply endorsement, affiliation, sponsorship, or partnership—is prohibited without SWAPN’s prior written authorization.

5. Proprietary Methodologies, Know-How, and Consulting Deliverables

SWAPN develops proprietary methodologies, analytical approaches, environmental assessment frameworks, consulting processes, validation techniques, research models, calibration procedures, and decision-support workflows (collectively, "Methodologies"). Methodologies represent valuable intellectual capital developed through research, professional expertise, and practical application over time, and are protected as confidential know-how, trade secrets, and—where applicable—patented or patent-pending inventions, independent of any single client engagement.

A "Deliverable" is the specific report, dataset, analysis, presentation, or other work product prepared for a client in the course of a defined engagement. A Deliverable is distinct from the Methodology used to produce it. Except as expressly agreed in writing, a client’s ownership of, or license to use, a Deliverable does not extend to the Methodology embodied within it, and does not include the right to reproduce, adapt, reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, or otherwise extract that Methodology for reuse in other contexts, for resale, or for the development of a competing framework, tool, or service. Publication, delivery, or public presentation of a Deliverable does not transfer ownership of the underlying Methodology, dedicate it to the public, or permit others to reproduce or commercialize it without SWAPN’s prior written authorization.

6. Software, Digital Platforms, and Licensing

Software applications, web platforms, databases, APIs, dashboards, digital tools, source code, object code, system architecture, and associated technical documentation developed or operated by SWAPN—including the SAQIP platform—(collectively, "SWAPN Software") remain the intellectual property of SWAPN unless otherwise agreed through a separate written contract. SWAPN Software may embody proprietary Methodologies, confidential know-how, trade secrets, and patented or patent-pending technology in addition to its copyrighted source code; use of SWAPN Software is governed by this Section and by any applicable product-specific agreement, and does not itself confer any right to those underlying methodologies or technologies beyond what is expressly licensed.

Access to a SWAPN platform or software service is provided under a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use that service for its intended purpose in accordance with the applicable subscription, service, or license agreement. Except as expressly permitted by that agreement, this license does not grant, and users may not: (a) copy, modify, or create derivative works of the SWAPN Software; (b) reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code, underlying algorithms, or data models of the SWAPN Software; (c) use automated means—including bots, scrapers, crawlers, or scripted API calls—to extract data, content, or functionality beyond what the applicable agreement or published API terms permit; (d) use SWAPN Software or any data obtained from it to train, fine-tune, benchmark, or otherwise develop any artificial intelligence or machine learning model; (e) sublicense, resell, rent, lease, or otherwise make the SWAPN Software available to any third party; or (f) remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notices. No license granted under this Section conveys any ownership of the software, underlying technologies, documentation, source code, or related intellectual property, all of which remain vested in SWAPN. Product-specific operational documentation, licensing terms, and technical governance for SAQIP remain separate and are addressed by its own service agreements and platform documentation, which control over this Policy for matters they specifically govern.

7. Permitted Use

Unless otherwise restricted by law or written agreement, users may:

• Access and view publicly available SWAPN content.
• Download publicly released publications for personal, educational, or internal organizational use, without further redistribution.
• Reference SWAPN reports or publications with appropriate attribution.
• Share links to official SWAPN websites and publicly available content.
• Cite SWAPN research in accordance with accepted academic or professional citation practices, consistent with Section 3.

These permissions apply only to publicly released SWAPN content. They do not extend to confidential know-how, trade secrets, unpublished Methodologies, source code, datasets, or any other material not made publicly available by SWAPN.

8. Restricted Use

Without SWAPN’s prior written permission, users must not:

• Copy or reproduce substantial portions of SWAPN content for commercial purposes.
• Modify, translate, or create derivative works from SWAPN Materials.
• Remove, obscure, or alter copyright notices, trademark notices, or other ownership information.
• Reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code, underlying algorithms, or data models of any SWAPN software or digital platform, except to the limited extent such restriction is prohibited by applicable law.
• Extract, scrape, crawl, harvest, or systematically reproduce proprietary databases, datasets, or website content by automated means, including through bots, scripts, or scheduled bulk-download tools not expressly authorized by SWAPN.
• Use SWAPN content, datasets, software outputs, or Methodologies—whether obtained through authorized access or otherwise—to train, fine-tune, evaluate, or otherwise develop any artificial intelligence or machine learning model, or to build a derivative or competing dataset.
• Use SWAPN branding in a manner that implies endorsement, affiliation, or partnership.
• Redistribute, sublicense, resell, or represent SWAPN’s proprietary reports, Methodologies, software, datasets, or documentation as original or independently developed work.
• Engage in any unauthorized commercial reuse of SWAPN content or intellectual property, including incorporating it into a paid product, service, or dataset offered to third parties.
• Use SWAPN content or intellectual property in a misleading, deceptive, or unlawful manner.

9. Third-Party Intellectual Property

SWAPN’s websites, platforms, and publications may reference or incorporate third-party organizations, standards, software, publications, datasets, or trademarks. This may include client trademarks, government emblems, standards organizations, open-source or licensed software libraries, partner branding, and certification marks (collectively, "Third-Party IP").

Third-Party IP remains the exclusive property of its respective owners at all times and is not owned by, and is not represented to be owned by, SWAPN. Where SWAPN Materials incorporate Third-Party IP, that incorporation is used solely for identification, attribution, interoperability, collaboration, or other legitimate purposes, and remains subject to the terms under which SWAPN was permitted to use it. Nothing within this Policy claims, or should be read as claiming, ownership over any Third-Party IP, and this Policy does not grant any rights in Third-Party IP beyond what its respective owner has authorized. Users seeking to use Third-Party IP referenced in SWAPN Materials should obtain permission directly from the relevant rights holder.

10. Licensing and Permissions

Organizations or individuals seeking permission to reproduce, publish, translate, distribute, license, or commercially use SWAPN intellectual property—including SWAPN Software, Methodologies, datasets, or published content—must submit a written request to [email protected] describing:

• The specific material or intellectual property requested, identified with reasonable precision
• The intended use and, where applicable, the specific product or service into which it will be incorporated
• The intended audience and geographic scope of distribution
• The requested duration or term of use
• Any proposed commercial activity, including whether the material will be resold, sublicensed, or offered as part of a paid product or service
• The requesting organization’s name and contact details

SWAPN will endeavor to acknowledge receipt of a complete request and will evaluate each request on a case-by-case basis against its intended use and applicable business, legal, and confidentiality considerations. Submission of a request does not guarantee approval, does not create any license or right of use pending SWAPN’s written response, and does not obligate SWAPN to disclose confidential know-how, trade secrets, or unpublished Methodologies regardless of outcome. Any license granted will be documented in a separate written agreement setting out its scope, term, and conditions.

11. Reporting Intellectual Property Infringement

If you believe that your intellectual property rights have been infringed by content published on a SWAPN platform, or if you believe SWAPN intellectual property is being used without authorization, please contact us at [email protected]. To help us investigate the matter promptly and fairly, please include, to the extent available:

• A description of the material in question and the specific intellectual property right you believe is implicated
• Relevant URLs or locations where the material appears
• A good-faith statement of the basis for your belief that use of the material is unauthorized
• Any supporting documentation evidencing ownership or authorization
• Your contact details, so that SWAPN may follow up if needed

SWAPN will review reports submitted in good faith and take such action as it reasonably considers appropriate, consistent with applicable law and any contractual obligations, which may include investigation, removal or correction of content, or referral to legal counsel. Submission of a report does not guarantee any particular outcome or action, and knowingly submitting a false or bad-faith report may itself expose the reporting party to liability. This process addresses reports concerning content on SWAPN-operated platforms and does not substitute for formal legal proceedings available to rights holders under applicable law.

12. Policy Updates

SWAPN may update this Intellectual Property Policy from time to time to reflect changes in business operations, products, services, or legal requirements. The revised version will become effective upon publication unless otherwise stated. Your continued use of SWAPN websites, products, or services following publication of an updated policy constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.