legal-identity-notices

Visitors and regulators both expect a real operator behind a site, and asset licenses (fonts, images, icons, libraries) come with conditions. AI-built sites routinely ship with "© 2023 Your Company", stock images of unknown origin, and dropped attribution.

Activate when

• Any public product, and especially: commerce, user accounts, user content, or third-party assets (images, fonts, icons, code, datasets, templates).
• The footer or legal pages show placeholders, an outdated year, or a name that differs from the product.
• Not to draft trademark or copyright legal strategy.

Inspect

1. Operator identity. Footer, about, contact, terms, invoices/receipts: legal or trading name; whether it matches across all of them; registered address or contact where the business type expects it (commerce, B2C services); registration or tax numbers where the owner has them. Missing facts are owner-only: list them.
2. Copyright line. Present, correct owner, sensible year or range, not "Your Company", not a template's author.
3. Trademarks. Product name used consistently; ™/® only if the owner asserts a mark. Third-party logos or names used (customer logos, "works with" strips, integrations) and whether the owner has permission (ask; do not assume).
4. Asset licenses.
   • Code and dependencies: run licenses/manifest inspection; copyleft or attribution-required licenses in shipped client code; missing LICENSE/NOTICE where required. (dependency-security for vulnerabilities.)
   • Images, illustrations, icons, fonts, video, music: provenance for shipped assets (stock, AI-generated, downloaded from a search); license terms and required attribution; template/theme licenses (a paid theme may require a per-site license).
   • Ask for the source if unknown. "No provenance found" is UNKNOWN, not a violation.
5. Attribution pages. If licenses require credit, is there a visible acknowledgements/credits page or footer link?
6. User content and takedown. If users upload content: is there a contact/route for reporting infringement or abuse (user-content-safety)?
7. Consistency. The operator named in terms, privacy notice, checkout, emails, and footer must be the same entity (policy-consistency).

Evidence that counts

Label each claim OBSERVED, SOURCE-INDICATED, DECLARED, INFERRED, UNKNOWN, or REVIEW REQUIRED. UNKNOWN is never a pass and never a failure.

• Confirm legal-operator identity with the owner; project files can corroborate it but do not establish it. Never infer the operator from branding, a domain, username, repository ownership, or billing-provider names.
• A license file found in a package is SOURCE-INDICATED; whether usage complies is REVIEW REQUIRED.
• Image reverse-search is not proof of license status; report as UNKNOWN unless the owner has documentation.
• Legal specifics: never from memory. When a rule, deadline, threshold, or required wording matters, read the current text or guidance at an official source while you run (start from references/official-sources.md), cite the source and access date, and treat applicability to this business as REVIEW REQUIRED. If you cannot look it up, the answer is UNKNOWN.

May change

Replace placeholder copyright text with owner-supplied identity; make the name consistent everywhere the owner confirms; add an acknowledgements/credits page listing licenses that the packages themselves declare; add visible contact/report routes that exist; add alt/credit text where an asset's license requires it and the owner supplies it. Do not invent entities, addresses, numbers, or ® marks; never swap in stock images without the owner deciding.

Must not claim

"Fully licensed", "no IP issues", "trademarked", "registered", or any statement about ownership or infringement. Do not fabricate license text; only reproduce what the package declares.

Verify

Search rendered pages and legal pages for placeholder patterns ("Your Company", "Lorem", "© 20XX", template author names) and confirm zero; confirm operator name and contact are identical in footer, terms, privacy, and checkout; confirm credit/license pages resolve (node scripts/check-links.mjs --url <site> --render, path relative to this skill's folder).

Escalate

Unknown provenance of significant assets, copyleft in a proprietary product, use of third-party brands/logos, or user content with infringement risk: REVIEW REQUIRED; name the specific asset or obligation that is unresolved. Keep the recommendation proportional: name the specific unresolved fact or risk that warrants it (minors, sensitive data, a regulated domain, cross-border sale, unclear markets, contested wording), and do not tell an ordinary low-risk site to hire a lawyer.

No change is valid when

Operator identity and notices are complete and consistent, and asset licenses are documented. Or (personal project) the owner chooses minimal identity; record that choice as DECLARED.