Content & Image Use Policy

01 Ownership

All photography, product images, lifestyle and studio imagery, video, illustrations, page design and written content published on ujimatchatea.com are the property of Premium Health Japan Co., Ltd. (trading as Uji Matcha Tea), or are used by us under license. They are protected by the copyright law of Japan and by the international copyright treaties to which Japan is a party.

This covers, among other things:

• product photography and packaging shots;
• lifestyle, studio, farm and tea-preparation photography;
• video and moving image;
• product descriptions, tasting notes, and brewing and preparation guides;
• educational articles, buying guides and blog posts;
• our wholesale catalog, its product copy, and the layout and design of these pages.

02 What is not permitted

Without our prior written permission, you may not:

• Reproduce or download. Copy, download, screenshot, save, print or otherwise reproduce our images, video or written content.
• Scrape. Crawl, scrape or bulk-download this site, or any part of it, by automated means.
• Resell as stock. Sell, sub-license or redistribute our material, including offering it as stock photography or through an image library.
• Use in other listings. Place our images or copy in your own product listings, on marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Rakuten, Etsy or Shopee, or in any third-party store, catalog, brochure or price list.
• Train AI on it. Include our images or written content in datasets used to train, fine-tune, benchmark or otherwise develop machine learning or generative AI models.

This applies whether or not we are credited, and whether or not the material has been cropped, filtered, recolored, upscaled or otherwise edited. An altered copy is still a copy.

03 Buying from us does not include image rights

This is the point most often misunderstood, so we would rather state it plainly than leave it to be assumed.

Ownership of the tea and ownership of the pictures of the tea are two different things. A wholesale account, an OEM or private-label order, a signed supply agreement, a distribution arrangement, or many years of good trading history does not carry an image license with it, and none of them changes who holds the copyright.

We know this is inconvenient when you are building a listing under time pressure. It is also why we are usually glad to help: if you stock our tea and you need imagery for it, write to us and ask. A license is often straightforward to arrange, and we would much rather grant one than find the images already in use without it.

04 What is permitted

• Linking. You are welcome to link to any page on ujimatchatea.com, from anywhere, for any purpose. Links need no permission and never have.
• Press and editorial use, with prior written permission. Journalists, writers, editors and researchers may use our images and quote our material once we have agreed to it in writing. Tell us about the piece and where it will run; we can usually supply higher-resolution files and correct captions, and we respond quickly to deadlines.
• Sharing our own social posts. You may share or repost our posts using a platform’s built-in share function, which keeps the attribution and the link back to us intact. Downloading an image and re-uploading it as your own post is a different thing, and is not covered.

05 Requesting a license

Email info@ujimatchatea.com and tell us:

• which images or content you would like to use;
• where they will appear — website, online listing, packaging, print, advertising, social media;
• the territory, and how long you need them for;
• whether the use is commercial;
• your company name and, if you already buy from us, your account or order reference.

We will come back to you with terms. Where we grant a license it will be in writing and it will be specific: it will name the files, the permitted use, the territory and the period. Nothing outside that written agreement should be read as permission — not a verbal yes, not an email thread about something else, and not silence from us.

06 Enforcement

We use automated image-monitoring services that search the web for copies of our photography. Where we find our material in use without permission, we will normally:

• contact the site owner, host or platform with a takedown notice, including DMCA notices where they apply;
• notify the marketplace concerned, which can result in a listing or a seller account being removed;
• invoice for the unlicensed use at our standard commercial rates; and
• take the matter further legally where that proves necessary.

We would far rather license our work to you than chase it, and in almost every case a short email at the start settles the question. But this photography is commissioned at real cost, and we do protect it.

Governing law. This policy is governed by the laws of Japan, alongside the international copyright conventions to which Japan is a party, including the Berne Convention. It sits alongside our Terms of Service and does not replace them.

07 Contact

License requests, permission requests, press inquiries, and any question about this policy: