Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data PrePatent PrePartnering Wisdom collects when you visit or use prepatent.org, why we collect it, how long we keep it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have.

Effective date: October 13, 2026

Who we are

Our website address is: https://prepatent.org.

The site is called PrePatent PrePartnering Wisdom. It publishes educational content about patent strategy, pre-partnering and commercialization, and offers consulting services and digital products through its shop. The site is owned and operated by its owner, an individual who is a Canadian citizen now living in Israel. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to the site owner, and “you” refers to anyone who visits or uses the site.

For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK GDPR, the site owner is the controller of the personal data described in this policy. We do not publish a postal address. All written requests, including privacy requests, should be sent by email to [email protected].

This policy covers personal data processed through our WordPress site and the plugins and services described below. It does not cover external websites we link to.

Personal data we collect

We collect only the data we need to run the site, answer your questions, deliver what you order and keep the site secure. Please do not send us special categories of data (such as health or biometric data).

Contact form

Our contact form is powered by the Contact Form 7 plugin. When you use it, we collect:

• your name;
• your email address;
• the subject and content of your message;
• your consent checkbox selection; and
• technical data sent with the submission, such as your IP address and browser user agent, which helps us detect spam and abuse.

Submissions are emailed to the site owner and are also stored in the site’s database for record keeping. Please do not send confidential invention details through the contact form. If a discussion needs to cover confidential information, we will first agree on an appropriate non-disclosure arrangement. See our Terms & Conditions for more.

Orders and customer accounts

Our shop runs on WooCommerce and sells consulting services and digital products. When you place an order, we collect the information needed to process it, such as:

• name, email address and, where required, phone number;
• billing address and country (which may be needed for tax purposes);
• the products or services you ordered, prices, taxes, discounts and order history;
• notes you add to your order; and
• technical data such as IP address and browser user agent, which WooCommerce records with orders to help prevent fraud.

If you create a customer account, we also store your username, a securely hashed password and your account details. You can update most account details by logging in to your account.

Payment card data. Payments are processed by the payment gateway or gateways configured in our WooCommerce store and shown to you at checkout. We do not receive or store full card numbers. The payment provider processes your payment data under its own privacy policy and may share limited information with us, such as the transaction status, the last digits of your card, or the payment method used.

Comments

Comments may be disabled on some or all of the site. Where comments are enabled and you leave one, WordPress collects the data shown in the comment form (name, email address, and optional website), plus your IP address and browser user agent string to help with spam detection. Your name, website and comment are displayed publicly. Your email address is not published.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service, operated by Automattic Inc., to check whether you use it. After your comment is approved, your Gravatar profile picture (if you have one) is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Cookies and local storage

We use a small number of cookies and browser storage items that are necessary for the site to work, remember your consent choices, keep shopping carts and logins working, protect the site, and remember optional on-page preferences such as quiz results and reading progress. Details are in the cookies section below and in our Cookie Policy.

Server logs

Our hosting provider automatically records technical information when your browser requests a page, typically your IP address, the date and time, the page requested, the referring page, your browser and operating system. These logs are used to deliver the site, diagnose problems and protect against abuse.

Security logs

We use the Wordfence security plugin and the WP Hide & Security Enhancer plugin to protect the site. Wordfence logs IP addresses and request details, records login attempts, and blocks traffic that appears malicious, such as brute-force login attempts, vulnerability scans or known attack patterns. Wordfence may also set security cookies for logged-in users.

Data you choose to send us by email

If you email us directly, we receive your email address, name, message and any attachments, and use them to reply and keep a record of our correspondence.

What we do not collect by default

No Google Analytics, advertising pixels or ad networks are installed on the site by default. If we add analytics in the future, it will only run after you give consent through our cookie banner, and we will update this policy and our Cookie Policy before doing so.

Purposes and legal bases

Under the GDPR and UK GDPR (Article 6), we must have a legal basis for each use of personal data. The table below summarizes our purposes and the legal bases we rely on. Other privacy laws, such as Canada’s PIPEDA, rely mainly on knowledge and consent; by using the features described here, and where applicable by ticking the relevant consent boxes, you consent to the processing described.

Purpose	Data used	Legal basis (GDPR Art. 6)
Responding to contact form submissions and emails	Name, email, subject, message, consent record	Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) and, where you ask about our services, steps taken at your request before entering into a contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Processing orders, delivering consulting services and digital products, managing customer accounts	Order, billing and account data	Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Keeping accounting and tax records	Order and billing data	Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c))
Preventing fraud, spam and abuse, and securing the site	IP address, user agent, server and security logs, security cookies	Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) in keeping the site and its users safe
Publishing and moderating comments	Name, email, website, comment, IP address, user agent	Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) and legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) in moderating spam
Remembering cookie choices and providing strictly necessary functions	Consent cookie, session and login cookies	Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) and, where required by ePrivacy rules, the “strictly necessary” exemption
Optional analytics (only if added in the future)	Usage data	Consent (Art. 6(1)(a))
Establishing, exercising or defending legal claims	Relevant records	Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f))

Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing that took place before you withdrew it. Where we rely on legitimate interests, you have the right to object, as explained below.

We do not use personal data for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not sell personal data.

How long we keep your data

We keep personal data only as long as we need it for the purposes described above, or as long as the law requires. The periods below are our general rules; we may keep data longer if it is needed to resolve a dispute or defend a legal claim.

Type of data	Retention period
Contact form submissions and email correspondence	Up to 24 months after our last communication with you, unless the correspondence relates to an order or ongoing engagement
Order records, invoices and related correspondence	As long as required by applicable tax and accounting laws, typically up to 7 years after the end of the relevant tax year
Customer account data	Until you ask us to delete your account, or after a long period of inactivity; order records are kept as described above
Comments and comment metadata	Kept indefinitely so follow-up comments can be recognized and approved automatically, unless you ask us to remove them
Server logs (hosting provider)	A limited period set by our hosting provider, generally no longer than needed for operations and security
Wordfence security logs	Kept on a rolling basis, generally days to weeks, as configured in Wordfence; records of blocked attackers may be kept longer where needed to protect the site
Cookies and local storage	See the durations in our Cookie Policy

Users who register on the site can see, edit or delete their personal information at any time, except their username, which cannot be changed. Site administrators can also see and edit that information.

Who we share your data with

We do not sell or rent your personal data. We share it only with service providers that help us run the site, and only to the extent they need it to provide their services. These include:

Recipient	Why	Data involved
Web hosting provider	Stores the site, its database and its files; processes server logs	All data stored on the site; server logs
Payment processors (the gateway shown at checkout)	Process payments and help prevent fraud	Name, billing details, payment data, order amount
Email service providers	Deliver contact form notifications, order emails and our correspondence	Name, email address, message and order content
Defiant, Inc. (maker of Wordfence)	Security services such as threat intelligence, scanning and blocking of malicious traffic	IP addresses and technical request data, as described in Wordfence’s own terms and privacy policy
Automattic Inc. (Gravatar)	Displays profile pictures next to comments	A hash of the commenter’s email address
CookieYes	Provides the cookie consent banner	Your consent choices, stored in a cookie in your browser

We may also disclose personal data if required by law or a valid request from a public authority, to protect our rights or the safety of others, or to professional advisers bound by confidentiality. If the site is ever transferred to a new owner, personal data may be transferred with it, and this policy (or one offering equivalent protection) will continue to apply.

International data transfers

The site owner lives in Israel, and our service providers may store or process data in other countries, including the United States, Canada and countries in the European Union. This means your personal data may be transferred to, and accessed from, countries other than your own.

When personal data from the EU/EEA or the UK is transferred to another country, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as:

• adequacy decisions of the European Commission or the UK government (for example, the European Commission has recognized both Israel and Canada, for commercial organizations subject to PIPEDA, as providing adequate protection);
• Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent contractual terms offered by our service providers; and
• other lawful transfer mechanisms where applicable.

For Canadian users, please note that data transferred to other countries may be subject to the laws of those countries, including lawful access by their authorities. You can ask us for more information about transfer safeguards by emailing us.

Cookies and similar technologies

Cookies are small text files stored by your browser. We use:

• Strictly necessary cookies for logins, shopping carts, checkout, security (Wordfence) and remembering your cookie choices (CookieYes).
• Functional cookies and comment cookies, such as the cookies WordPress sets when you choose to save your name, email and website for future comments.
• Browser local storage used by our theme to remember optional preferences such as quiz results and reading progress. This data stays in your browser and is not sent to us.

When you first visit, a CookieYes banner lets you accept or reject non-essential cookies. You can change your choice at any time using the “Cookie Settings” link in the footer. For the full list of cookies, their purposes and durations, see our Cookie Policy.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (for example, videos, images or documents) from other websites. Embedded content from other websites behaves in exactly the same way as if you had visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Many images on the site come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under their respective licenses; attributions are listed on our image credits page.

Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights. We will honor valid requests in line with the law that applies to you, and we generally extend the core rights of access, correction and deletion to all users.

EU/EEA and UK (GDPR and UK GDPR)

• Access: obtain confirmation of whether we process your data and a copy of it.
• Rectification: correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Erasure: ask us to delete your data in certain circumstances.
• Restriction: ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
• Portability: receive data you provided to us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
• Objection: object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent.
• Complain to your local data protection authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office). We would appreciate the chance to address your concern first.

Canada (PIPEDA)

• Request access to the personal information we hold about you and information about how it has been used and disclosed.
• Challenge the accuracy and completeness of that information and have it amended.
• Withdraw consent, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice.
• File a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Israel (Privacy Protection Law, 5741-1981)

• Inspect personal information about you held in a database.
• Request that information that is incorrect, incomplete, unclear or out of date be corrected or deleted.
• Ask to be removed from any direct-mailing list.
• Contact the Privacy Protection Authority if you believe your rights have been infringed.

California (CCPA as amended by the CPRA)

To the extent the California Consumer Privacy Act applies to us, California residents have the right to:

• know what categories and specific pieces of personal information we collect, use and disclose;
• delete personal information we have collected, subject to exceptions;
• correct inaccurate personal information;
• opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information (we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined, and we have not done so in the past 12 months);
• limit the use of sensitive personal information (we do not use sensitive personal information for purposes that would trigger this right); and
• not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

We collect identifiers, commercial information, network activity information and message content, from the sources and for the purposes described above. You may use an authorized agent to make a request.

How to exercise your rights

To make a request, email [email protected] with a subject line such as “Privacy Request” and tell us:

1. which right you want to exercise;
2. the email address and name you used on the site, and any order number if relevant; and
3. where you live, so we can apply the correct law.

We may ask for additional information to verify your identity before acting on a request, to protect your data from being disclosed to someone else. We will respond within the time required by applicable law, generally within one month under the GDPR and UK GDPR, 30 days under PIPEDA, and 45 days under the CCPA, with possible extensions where the law allows. Requests are normally free of charge. If we cannot fulfil a request, for example because we must keep certain order records for tax purposes, we will explain why.

Children’s privacy

This site is intended for adults and is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16 years of age (or a higher age where local law requires). Purchases may only be made by adults who can form binding contracts. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

How we protect your data

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect personal data, including:

• encrypted connections (HTTPS) across the site;
• firewall, malware scanning and login protection through Wordfence;
• hardening measures through WP Hide & Security Enhancer;
• keeping WordPress, the theme and plugins updated;
• limiting administrative access and using strong authentication; and
• relying on payment processors for card handling, so full card numbers never reach our site.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. If a breach affects your data and the law requires notification, we will notify you or the regulator.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when we add features, change service providers or the law changes. We will post the updated version here and change the effective date at the top. For significant changes, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you, for example with a notice on the site.

Contact us

For any questions about this policy or how we handle personal data, contact the site owner by email at [email protected]. We do not publish a postal address; all written requests should be sent to this email address. You can also reach us through our contact page.

Related policies: Cookie Policy, Terms & Conditions, Disclaimer.