Privacy Policy
Last updated: 28 October 2026
1. Who we are
The Patent (thepatent.news) is an international magazine published by WitUp Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company no. 16572774, VAT GB499506632), registered office: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom.
WitUp Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.
Contact for privacy requests: privacy@witup.ai.
EU representative (Article 27 GDPR): being appointed. Until then, people in the European Union can write to privacy@witup.ai.
2. What we collect and why
| When | Data | Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| You subscribe to the newsletter | Email address, the page you subscribed from, the consent text and date | Sending the newsletter | Your consent (you can withdraw it at any time with the link in every email) |
| You create or use an account (readers and contributors) | Name, email address, password (stored only as a secure hash), sign-in times, newsletter preference; for accounts moved from the previous site, the registration date and role on that site | Giving you access to your account and its services | Performance of the service you asked for |
| You reset or set your password | Email address and a single-use link valid for one hour | Account security | Performance of the service; our legitimate interest in security |
| You apply as a contributor | Name, email, country, occupation, topics, a short bio and links you choose to share | Assessing your application and replying to you | Your request and consent |
| You write to us through the contact form | Name, email, organisation type and name, subject, message; a one-way hash of your IP address and your browser type, used to block spam | Replying to you; preventing abuse | Your request; our legitimate interest in protecting the form |
| You browse the site | Technical data processed by our hosting provider (IP address, browser, pages requested) | Delivering the site securely | Our legitimate interest |
| You accept analytics cookies | Pseudonymous usage data collected by Google Analytics 4, with IP anonymisation | Measuring readership in aggregate | Your consent (cookie banner) |
| You ask The Patent AI a question | Neither the text of your question nor the generated answer: only its length, the time, your account if you are signed in, and a one-way hash of your IP address, used to count the daily questions | Counting the free daily quota; preventing abuse; measuring the service in aggregate | Performance of the service you asked for; our legitimate interest in preventing abuse |
| You buy Press Release Studio credits | Name, organisation, billing address, country, VAT number, email, the package bought, the amount, the payment status (we never see your card details) | Selling the credits, issuing invoices, meeting tax obligations | Performance of the contract; legal obligation (tax and accounting) |
| You publish a press release | The text, images, links and contact you provide, the results of the automatic checks | Publishing and checking the release | Performance of the contract |
| A page of the site is not found | The address requested, the referring page and the browser type (no IP address) | Fixing broken links | Our legitimate interest |
Email delivery log: we record the recipient address, the type of email, the delivery outcome and any error, to check that receipts and account emails reach their recipients. Legal basis: legitimate interest. Retention: 90 days.
We do not use your data for advertising profiling. Advertising on the site is counted only as aggregate impressions and clicks per banner and day: no IP address, cookie or identifier is stored.
Questions to The Patent AI are sent to our AI provider (Google Gemini) only to generate the answer; we store neither the question nor the generated answer, and they are not used to train the provider's models.
The text of a press release is sent to our AI provider (Google Gemini) for the automatic checks; it is not used to train the provider's models.
The texts of contact messages, applications and newsletter data are not sent to artificial intelligence services.
3. Cookies and similar technologies
- Necessary: a record of your cookie choice stored in your browser, and sign-in cookies when you use your account. They do not require consent.
- Analytics (with consent only): Google Analytics cookies (
_ga,_ga_*). The Google script is loaded only after you accept, and the cookies are removed if you reject. You can change your choice at any time from "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page. - Videos: YouTube videos load only when you click them, from youtube-nocookie.com.
- Some older articles show images hosted on other websites; those websites receive your IP address when the image loads.
See also the Cookie Policy.
4. Who processes data on our behalf
| Provider | Role | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel Inc. | Website hosting and delivery | EU (Frankfurt) for the website functions, and a global CDN; US company |
| Supabase Inc. | Database and file storage | EU (Frankfurt); US company |
| Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.) | Sending account emails and the newsletter | EU (Ireland); US company |
| Stripe Payments Europe Ltd / Stripe, Inc. | Payments for Press Release Studio | EU (Ireland); US company |
| Zoho Corporation | Invoicing (Zoho Books) | EU data centre; Indian company |
| Google LLC / Google Ireland Ltd | Google Analytics (with consent); AI answers of The Patent AI and automatic checks of press releases (Gemini) | EU/United States |
| Make (Celonis) | Publishing posts on our social channels (article content only, no personal data of readers) | EU |
Where data is transferred outside the UK or the EU, the transfer relies on adequacy decisions (such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the UK extension) or on standard contractual clauses.
5. How long we keep data
We keep personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected for and to meet our legal obligations, and then we delete it or make it anonymous. In particular:
- Newsletter: until you unsubscribe; after that we keep only the record of your consent and of your unsubscription, for as long as we may need to prove them.
- Accounts: while your account is active, and until you ask us to delete it.
- Password links: only until they are used or expire, then they are deleted.
- Contributor applications and contact messages: for as long as needed to handle them and reply, and then for as long as we may need them to answer a later request or claim.
- Not-found pages log: only as long as needed to fix broken links.
- Administrative audit log: for as long as needed to keep the panel secure and to account for the changes made.
- Purchases and invoices: for the period required by tax and accounting law.
- Questions to The Patent AI: neither the question nor the generated answer is stored; the length, the time, the account and the IP hash used for the daily quota are kept only as long as needed to provide and protect the service.
- Analytics: as set in Google Analytics, only with your consent.
6. Your rights
Under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR you can ask to access, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable format. You can withdraw consent at any time, without affecting processing carried out before. To exercise these rights, write to the contact above; we answer within one month.
You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) or to the data protection authority of the EU country where you live, for example the Italian Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (garanteprivacy.it).
7. Changes
We will publish any change on this page, with its date.
8. Governing law
This policy is governed by the law of England and Wales. This does not affect the rights you have under the data protection law of the country where you live, including your right to complain to its supervisory authority (section 6).