Privacy Policy & IP Notice | Mercenary Planet™

Part A — Intellectual Property Rights

1. Ownership

Mercenary Planet™, including its concept, storyline, lore, world-building, setting, characters, character names and designs, and creative direction (together, the “IP”), is the original work and sole intellectual property of Mr. Vijayasarathi Rajasekaran (the “Author”).

Mr. Vijayasarathi Rajasekaran is also the Founder & Director of ArtizenseHub Private Limited (“ArtizenseHub”). The IP is owned by the Author personally and not by ArtizenseHub. Any development, publication or commercial exploitation of the IP by ArtizenseHub, or by any partner, studio or investor, takes place only under rights granted in writing by the Author.

2. Scope of Protection

The IP is protected under the Copyright Act, 1957, the Trade Marks Act, 1999, and other applicable laws of India, as well as international copyright treaties including the Berne Convention. Protection extends to, without limitation:

text, scripts, narrative and lore;
characters, including their names, appearances, biomechanical designs and personalities;
artwork, concept art, 3D models, animation, audio and video;
the names and logos “Mercenary Planet” and “Ash & Steel”, and any associated marks.

3. Acknowledgement of Early Contributors

About 17 years ago, during early development of the project, some characters were first visualised and modelled by other artists. Their contributions are gratefully acknowledged:

Contribution	Contributor
Striker — initial 3D model and demo animation	Dinjith
Cancer — initial 3D model and demo animation	Krishnaprasad
BloodHound — initial 3D model	Krishnaprasad
Demo sound design	Sikanth Gopinath

These contributions were early renderings of characters and concepts created by the Author, and they form part of the project’s history. This acknowledgement is made as a courtesy. It does not give any person any ownership of, licence to, or right to use the IP, including the characters and concepts named above.

All other characters, including Hyena, Viper and every other biomechanical creation, as well as the core concept, storyline and creative direction, were conceived and designed solely by the Author.

4. Creative Control

As sole owner of the IP, the Author keeps full discretion to add, remove, modify or redesign any character, storyline element or world-building component to fit the vision of the project.

5. Rights Reserved

All rights to develop, produce, distribute, licence and adapt the IP in any medium now known or created later are reserved exclusively to the Author. This includes video games, films, series, animation, publishing, merchandise and training programmes.

The project may be carried out under the ArtizenseHub banner or together with executive partners, studios or investors. Any such collaboration is on a rights-reserved basis: the Author keeps ownership of the IP and full creative control, and no rights pass unless expressly set out in a written agreement signed by the Author.

6. Prohibited Use

No part of the IP or of this website may be copied, reproduced, modified, adapted, distributed, publicly displayed, used to train artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models, or otherwise used, in whole or in part, without the Author’s prior written consent. The only exception is use expressly permitted by law, such as fair dealing for criticism, review or news reporting with proper attribution.

Unauthorised use infringes the Author’s copyright, trademark and other rights. The Author may seek every remedy available under applicable law, including injunctions, damages and criminal proceedings.

7. Reporting Infringement & Permission Requests

To report suspected infringement or to ask for permission to use any material, write to legal@artizensehub.com. Please identify the material concerned and the location of the suspected infringement.

Part B — Privacy Policy

This website is operated by ArtizenseHub Private Limited, No. 52/3028 G, NH Bypass, Kanayanur, Vytilla, Ernakulam, Kerala – 682019, India (“we”, “us”). We are the Data Fiduciary for personal data collected through this website under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act”) and the rules made under it.

1. Information We Collect

Category	Examples	How collected
Technical & usage data	Browser type, device type, approximate location (country/city level), pages visited, referring site, time spent	Automatically, through cookies and similar technologies used by our hosting and service providers
Contact data	Name, email address, and the contents of your message	Provided by you when you use a contact form or email us
Wishlist & newsletter sign-ups	Name, email address, country, the editions or merchandise you save, and whether you want development or store updates	Provided by you when you add items to a wishlist or subscribe to The Dispatch
Event registrations	Name, email address, and your RSVP response	Provided by you when you register for an event
Job applications	Name, contact details, CV, portfolio links and the information in your application	Provided by you when you apply through the Careers page

We do not intentionally collect sensitive personal data such as financial, health or biometric information through this website. Please do not send us such information.

2. Why We Use Your Information

To respond to your enquiries and communicate with you, based on your consent.
To understand how visitors use the website and improve it.
To keep the website secure, prevent misuse, and meet our legal obligations.

We use personal data only for the purpose it was collected for, or a purpose compatible with it.

3. Sharing & Disclosure

We do not sell or rent your personal data. We share it only:

with service providers who host the website, provide analytics or deliver email on our behalf, under contracts that require them to protect the data and use it only on our instructions;
where required by law, court order or a lawful request from a government authority.

Some of these service providers may process data outside India. Where this happens, we transfer data only as permitted under the DPDP Act.

4. Cookies & Third-Party Services

We use cookies and similar technologies to run the website and improve it. These come from the third-party services the website relies on: Wix (website hosting, store catalogue, events, blog and forms), Google Fonts (typefaces), YouTube (embedded trailer videos) and Google Sheets (where copies of form submissions are stored). We do not currently use separate analytics or advertising tools. Where required by law, we ask for your consent before setting non-essential cookies. You can withdraw consent or block cookies at any time through your browser settings. Some features may not work properly without cookies.

5. Data Retention

We keep contact data only as long as needed to deal with your enquiry and any follow-up, and in any event for no longer than 24 months, unless the law requires us to keep it longer. Analytics data is kept in aggregated or pseudonymised form, in line with our service providers’ retention settings.

6. Data Security

We use reasonable security practices and procedures to protect personal data against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction, as required under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the DPDP Act. No internet-based service can be guaranteed to be fully secure. If a personal data breach occurs, we will notify affected users and the authorities as required by law.

7. Children’s Privacy

This website is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18 without verifiable parental consent, as required by the DPDP Act. If you believe a child has given us personal data, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

8. Third-Party Links

This website may link to external sites, such as partners, collaborators, studios or platforms. We are not responsible for their content or privacy practices, and we encourage you to read their policies.

9. Your Rights

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to:

get a summary of the personal data we hold about you and how we process it;
have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected or updated;
have your data erased when it is no longer needed;
withdraw consent at any time, without affecting processing already carried out;
nominate another person to exercise your rights in case of death or incapacity;
raise a grievance with us, and if it is not resolved, complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

If you are in the European Union, the United Kingdom or another region with its own data protection law, you may have additional rights under that law. To exercise any right, contact us using the details below. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

10. Grievance & Contact

Company: ArtizenseHub Private Limited
Address: No. 52/3028 G, NH Bypass, Kanayanur, Vytilla, Ernakulam, Kerala – 682019, India
Legal & privacy: legal@artizensehub.com
General enquiries: info@artizensehub.com
Phone: +91 76765 29713

We will acknowledge your grievance promptly and try to resolve it within the time limits set by applicable law.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this notice from time to time to reflect legal, technical or business changes. The “Last updated” date at the top shows when it was last revised. If we make material changes, we will post a clear notice on the website and, where required, ask for your consent again.

Governing Law & Jurisdiction

This notice, and any dispute arising from it or from use of this website or the IP, is governed by the laws of India. Subject to applicable law, the courts at Ernakulam, Kerala have exclusive jurisdiction.

Intellectual Property & Privacy Notice