The Society places great importance on respecting and protecting intellectual property rights, including but not limited to copyrights, owned by the Society and others.

Any employee or contractor engaged by the Society who wishes to use Society or any third party intellectual property in any Society product or service is required to obtain the right to do so and document the acquisition of rights PRIOR to its use, whether by license, permission, or other means. For clarity, “third party” includes National Geographic Partners’ assets which may be stored in other databases, such as SPI.

The copyright codes and related rights information in Cortex allows users to clear rights for National Geographic assets for Society projects or products.

Use of Cortex is for Society business only. Violation of this restriction may result in suspension of access privileges. ViewFinder contains information that may be accessed only by authorized and trained users who must treat the data as confidential and use it exclusively in the performance of their responsibilities to the Society.

For questions about rights to any asset included in Cortex, please contact ngslegal@ngs.org.