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They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. As the Lonely Planet brand has grown in reputation around the world, it's not uncommon to see our name or logo or content from our books being 'borrowed'. Sure, sometimes it's just for a laugh at our expense, but it can be much more serious, such as scammers passing themselves off as authors or trying to flog their own goods. How are you, the traveler, to know the difference? Infringements of our intellectual property, that is misappropriation of our name or logo, unauthorized use of our content or the production of pirate copies of our books, inevitably cause us loss, cause confusion for our customers, and mean that the quality of information you receive is compromised.
We rely on our traveling community to keep us informed. If you see any use of our name or our content that you suspect is not legitimate, please send us Feedback.
We do license content from our books and website by arrangement, which is why, for example, you can see the Lonely Planet WorldGuide on other websites. Visit Lonely Planet Business Solutions for more information.
Trademarks
Our brand is our most important asset, because it lets you recognize us and the quality of our products. It includes our name and logo and various other trademarks, such as Thorn Tree and Lonely Planet Images.
We do not allow our trademarks to be associated with any café, hostel, travel service provider or other commercial establishment, without permission or arrangement. Sometimes people who use our name think they're doing us a favor by providing free advertising. But travelers have certain expectations they associate with our name. There's always a danger that our name could be used in association with unreliable or disreputable information or services, which would damage our reputation: a stay in a flea-ridden 'Lonely Planet' hostel could seriously change the way you feel about us!
Using another business's trademark without permission is against the law for a reason. The trademark is valuable because it distinguishes the business's goods and services from others and confers certain rights. Any non-sanctioned use of a company's trademark, however innocent, lessens the company's control of it. In most countries the Lonely Planet brand is well-known and respected - even famous - and not surprisingly, we'd like to keep it that way. So we have trademark rights in many countries in the world, on the basis of that reputation or through registration.
Cybersquatters
Ever made a typo as you enter a web address in your browser and found yourself at a porn site? Ever searched the web for Lonely Planet guidebooks and found dodgy holiday packages instead? It's a pain in the neck for you, and a pain in the neck for us. There are plenty of unscrupulous people out there who'll use any method they can to direct you to their site. Or if they're a travel service provider, they might genuinely think Lonely Planet customers will be interested in their product. But we don't allow others to use domain name registrations containing the Lonely Planet name or variations on it to direct Internet users to their own websites without arrangement with us. It's not fair to us or to you as Internet users and consumers.
Use of another company's name or very similar words in a website's domain name is known as cybersquatting. It's a kind of trademark infringement. We consider any unauthorized use of our trademark, including in a domain name, as a misappropriation of our name and reputation. Some people think controlling the use of domain names will stifle the freedom of the internet, but we can't see why. Instead it will make domain names more reliable and the internet easier to use.
This is our official website. All our associated sites are linked to from our home page. We also have affiliates that you can reach through our Travel Services. If you're wondering about a site that appears to be run by Lonely Planet, but it's not linked to from our main site, chances are it's not legit.
Piracy
Along with fake Levis, CDs and Rolexes, you may have seen the imitation Lonely Planets. They range from photocopied jobs to well-bound reproductions that at first glance look like the real thing. Sometimes they're plastic wrapped so that you can't see the poor-quality photocopying or potentially out of date content inside (sometimes even previous editions are re-jacketed with the cover of the current edition).
We know they're cheaper. We know it looks like we can afford to lose a few sales. But pardon us getting on a soap box ever so briefly to say that black market Lonely Planet books cause us headaches! They compromise what we stand for - high quality products giving you what you need for an amazing travel experience. Piracy not only affect us - its effects could ultimately flow on to our authors, staff, product quality and prices and ultimately you, the customer and traveler.
If you value our books enough to want a copy, please help us out by buying the real thing and letting us know when you come across pirate copies. They are usually sold at markets or by touts, but in some countries piracy is so common that copies can even be found in bookshops, so be on the lookout.
Copyright
Lonely Planet is a great big well of travel intelligence, easily available in print and digital products, and it can be pretty tempting for other people to 'borrow' some of that and publish it themselves (particularly on the Internet). But we've invested a lot of effort, time, money and individual creativity into our products and we're not keen on having the results of our hard work stolen. Obviously we don't have ownership of the kind of information that anyone can dig up, like opening hours or train timetables, but we most certainly can own our opinions. We also own the choice of words we've made, that is, the way we've expressed the information. Copyright protection also applies to the visual elements in our products, and sometimes to the outcome of collecting together information or data in certain compilations.
We won't bore you with a primer on copyright law or try to summarise it all in one paragraph! Let's just say that, unless legal exceptions apply, our permission is needed before reproducing a 'substantial' part of a copyrighted work. 'Substantial' can be in quality or quantity. Uses requiring permission include making translations or putting content on the web.
There are many people to whom Lonely Planet has granted permission
to use our material. They're often educational institutions and
non-profit organizations, and they're required to acknowledge us
as the originators of the material. Contact Lonely Planet Business Solutions for inquiries about content licensing or permissions.
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