Last updated: August 10, 2026
The short version
You upload it, you're responsible for it.
When you send us an image to make into a rug, you are telling us you have the right to use that image. We don't check who owns it — we can't, and we don't try to. We simply make the rug you asked for.
If an image you upload turns out to belong to someone else, that is your responsibility, not ours. To the fullest extent the law allows, Personalize Rug is not responsible for the content you upload or for any claim that comes out of it, and you agree to cover us if a claim is made.
If you are not certain you have the right to use an image, don't upload it.
The full terms are below. They apply every time you upload.
1. What this policy covers
This policy applies to everything you send us to be reproduced on a product — through the Rug Studio, by email, by message, or by any other means. We call all of it Customer Content: photographs, artwork, drawings, paintings, logos, patterns, text, fonts, names, quotes, AI-generated images, scans, and anything else you provide.
This policy forms part of our Terms of Service. By uploading Customer Content or placing a custom order, you accept it.
2. What you promise us when you upload
Every time you provide Customer Content, you represent and warrant that:
a. You are at least 18 years old, or you have permission from a parent or legal guardian to place the order.
b. You own all intellectual property rights in the Customer Content, or you hold an express license or written permission from every rights holder that is broad enough to allow it to be reproduced on a physical product that is manufactured and sold to you.
c. Neither your Customer Content, nor our reproduction of it, infringes anyone's copyright, trademark, trade dress, design right, moral rights, right of publicity, right of privacy, or any other right.
d. You have obtained every consent and release needed for any identifiable person shown in the Customer Content (see Section 4).
e. The Customer Content is not unlawful, defamatory, obscene, hateful, harassing, or otherwise prohibited under Section 3.
f. If you are relying on a license — stock photography, a font license, a marketplace download, a Creative Commons license, an AI tool's terms — that license permits commercial reproduction on physical goods. Many licenses that look free or unrestricted do not.
You are solely responsible for the accuracy of these promises. We rely on them, and we produce your order on the strength of them.
3. Content we will not print
We will not knowingly reproduce Customer Content that:
- Infringes anyone's intellectual property rights
- Depicts or sexualizes a minor in any way
- Is sexually explicit
- Promotes hatred, violence, or discrimination against any person or group
- Harasses, threatens, defames, or targets a specific individual
- Promotes or depicts terrorism, extremism, or illegal activity
- Contains another person's private information
- Is fraudulent, or designed to impersonate a person, business, or official body
- Is otherwise unlawful where it will be made or delivered
This list is not exhaustive. We may decline any design at our discretion.
4. Photographs of people, children, and pets
Custom rugs made from personal photos are one of the things we love making. They also carry the most common misunderstanding, so please read this part.
The person in the photo isn't always the person who owns it. In most cases copyright in a photograph belongs to whoever took it, not to whoever appears in it. Professional portraits, school photos, newborn and maternity shoots, wedding and engagement photos, pet photography sessions, and images taken by a studio or agency usually remain the photographer's property — even if you paid for them and even if the subject is you or your child. If you want a rug made from a professional photograph, get a written print release from the photographer first.
Identifiable people need consent. If a living person can be recognized in the image, you confirm you have their permission to have that image reproduced and, where the law requires it, a signed model release. For anyone under 18, you confirm you have permission from their parent or legal guardian.
Pets. Your pet cannot hold copyright, but the person who photographed your pet can. The same rule applies: if a professional took the photo, you need their release.
Photos of the deceased. Memorial rugs are welcome. You still confirm you have the right to use the image and the agreement of the person's immediate family or estate where that is appropriate.
We do not verify consent, releases, or family agreement. That responsibility is entirely yours.
5. AI-generated images
You may upload images generated with AI tools. We treat them exactly like any other upload, and everything in this policy applies to them. A few things you should know before you do:
We don't ask, and we can't tell. We do not check whether an image was made by a person or a machine, and we make no judgment about it either way.
AI output can still infringe. An AI tool can reproduce a copyrighted character, a protected artistic style, a trademarked logo, a brand's trade dress, or a real person's likeness. The fact that a model generated it is not a defense, and it does not shift responsibility to us. The promises you make in Section 2 apply in full to AI-generated Customer Content.
Your AI tool's terms still bind you. Some generative AI services grant commercial-use rights to their output and some do not; some restrict use on physical merchandise; some vary by subscription tier. Check yours before you upload. You confirm you have the commercial rights the tool's terms require.
You may not own the result. The copyright status of purely AI-generated material is unsettled and differs by country. In the United States, the Copyright Office's current position is that material generated without sufficient human authorship cannot be registered. In practice this may mean you cannot stop anyone else from copying your rug's design, and we make no promise of exclusivity in any custom design.
Nothing here is legal advice. If the ownership of an AI-generated design matters to you commercially, speak to a lawyer before you order.
6. Logos, brands, characters, and licensed artwork
We decline orders that reproduce third-party brands or protected characters. That includes, without limitation:
- Sports teams, leagues, and club crests
- Universities, schools, and their mascots or seals
- Cartoon, film, television, anime, and video game characters
- Musicians, bands, album artwork, and tour graphics
- Fashion houses, monograms, and repeating brand patterns
- Company logos and product packaging you do not own
- Military insignia, government seals, and currency
"Fan art", "inspired by", and "I changed it enough" are not exceptions. A hand-drawn version of a protected character is still a derivative work, and a pattern that mimics a luxury house's monogram is still a trademark problem.
Your own brand is welcome. If the logo is yours, or you have a client's written authorization to use theirs, we are glad to make it. We may ask you to confirm this in writing before we begin production.
7. Finding an image online is not permission
This is the single most common source of trouble, so we'll be direct: an image being visible, downloadable, or reverse-searchable does not make it free to use.
That applies to Google Images, Pinterest, screenshots, wallpaper sites, social media posts, other retailers' product photography, marketplace listings, and any upscaled, filtered, cropped, or AI-enhanced version of any of those.
A few specific cases worth understanding:
Creative Commons is a license, not a giveaway. Read the specific terms. NC excludes commercial use. ND excludes derivative works — which a rug adaptation almost certainly is. BY requires attribution.
"Royalty-free" does not mean "free". It describes how the license is paid for, not whether you need one, and most royalty-free licenses restrict reproduction on physical goods for resale.
Public domain has an edge case. The underlying work may be out of copyright while a modern photograph, scan, or restoration of it carries its own fresh rights. Check what you are actually downloading.
Fonts and quotes count too. Typefaces are licensed software, and many licenses exclude use on merchandise. Song lyrics and long passages of text are protected work.
8. You cover us — indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Personalize Rug, together with its owners, officers, employees, contractors, manufacturing partners, and suppliers, from and against any claim, demand, action, proceeding, investigation, loss, liability, damage, judgment, settlement, cost, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to:
a. Your Customer Content;
b. Our storage, adaptation, reproduction, manufacture, display, shipment, or delivery of your Customer Content in accordance with your order;
c. Any breach of the promises you made in Section 2; or
d. Any allegation that any of the above infringes or violates the rights of a third party.
We will notify you of any claim covered by this section. We reserve the right to take control of the defense and settlement of any such claim at your expense, and you agree to cooperate with us. This obligation survives the completion, cancellation, or refund of your order.
9. We can refuse, pause, or cancel an order
We may decline, hold, or cancel any order, and remove or delete any Customer Content, at our sole discretion, at any time before or during production — with or without notice, and with or without giving a reason. We do this most often when we believe content may infringe someone's rights or falls under Section 3.
- If we cancel before production begins, you receive a full refund.
- If we cancel after production has begun, we will refund you in accordance with our Refund Policy.
We are under no obligation to review Customer Content, and we do not pre-screen uploads for ownership. If we do happen to review, approve, proof, or comment on a design, that is not an endorsement, not legal clearance, and not a warranty that the design is free of third-party rights. It does not transfer any responsibility from you to us, and it does not waive anything in this policy.
10. The permission you give us
You keep ownership of your Customer Content. We do not claim it.
You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, host, back up, resize, crop, recolor, adapt, and otherwise process your Customer Content solely in order to produce, quality-check, deliver, and support your order — including sharing it with the manufacturing partners and suppliers who make your rug. Adaptation is necessary: a photograph has to be translated into a knotted or tufted design, and colors must be matched to available yarns.
Marketing. We may photograph a finished rug and show that photograph in our marketing. We will not publish your original uploaded image, your name, or personal details without your permission. If you would prefer we not show your finished rug at all, email us at info@personalizerug.com and we will honor that.
This license ends when we no longer need it for the purposes above, except for backups and records we are required to keep.
11. What happens to your files
Your uploads are stored with your order and your email address so we can produce your rug, handle reorders, and resolve any quality claim. We keep them only for as long as we need them for those purposes, and for the period afterwards required by our legal, tax, and accounting obligations. After that they are deleted or anonymized.
You can ask us to delete your uploaded files at any time by emailing info@personalizerug.com. We will do so unless we are required to retain them for legal, tax, accounting, or dispute-resolution reasons. Deleting files may make it impossible for us to fulfill a reorder or assess a later claim.
How we handle your personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy.
12. Copyright complaints and takedown requests
We respect intellectual property rights and we respond to valid complaints.
If you believe material we have reproduced or displayed infringes a copyright you own or represent, send a written notice to our designated agent that includes all of the following:
- A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf.
- Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed.
- Identification of the material claimed to be infringing, with enough detail — a URL, order number, or product listing — for us to locate it.
- Your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
- A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
- A statement that the information in the notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
Send notices to: Copyright Agent, Personalize Rug — info@personalizerug.com, with "Copyright Notice" in the subject line. If you need to serve a notice by post, email us first and we will provide a postal address for service.
On receiving a valid notice we will remove or disable access to the material, cancel any affected order, and notify the customer who submitted it.
Counter-notification. If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or misidentification, you may send us a counter-notification containing your signature, identification of the removed material and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief it was removed by mistake, and your name, address, telephone number, and consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district (or, if you are outside the United States, any district in which we may be found).
Repeat infringers. We will terminate the accounts of customers who repeatedly submit infringing material.
Please be accurate. Under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), anyone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing — or was removed by mistake — may be liable for damages.
13. No monitoring, no legal advice
We are a manufacturer, not a rights clearance service. We do not vet Customer Content for ownership, licensing, consent, or releases, and we have no obligation to do so. Any comment we make about a design concerns how well it will translate into wool — not whether you are entitled to use it.
Nothing on this page is legal advice. If you are unsure whether you can use an image, ask a lawyer before you order.
14. Our responsibility
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Personalize Rug is not responsible or liable for any Customer Content, for the rights attaching to it, or for any claim, loss, or damage arising out of your provision of it or our reproduction of it at your instruction. Responsibility for Customer Content rests with you.
Our liability in connection with your order is otherwise limited as set out in our Terms of Service. Nothing in this policy excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, and nothing here affects any statutory rights you have as a consumer.
15. How this fits with our other terms
This policy is incorporated into our Terms of Service. Where they conflict, the Terms of Service prevail. Our Refund Policy, Shipping Policy, and Privacy Policy apply alongside it. This policy is governed by the law stated in our Terms of Service.
16. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The version in force is the one published here on the date you place your order, and the "last updated" date at the top of the page tells you when it last changed.
17. Contact us
Questions about an image, a license, or whether we can make something? Ask before you order — we would much rather answer a question than cancel an order.