Data ownership and IP rights for organizeing ACL26 share-task

[zyxnlp]

Dear Codabench team,

I hope this email finds you will.

I am writing to you as one of the organizers for the upcoming ACL 2026 Shared Task: CLPsych2026. We are currently evaluating platforms to host our competition and are very interested in using Codabench.

However, before we proceed, we need to clarify a few details regarding Intellectual Property and data usage rights to satisfy our strict data governance requirements.

It would be great if you could confirm the following:
Ownership: Does the organizer (us) retain full copyright and ownership of all datasets and submission files uploaded to the platform?
Usage Rights: Does Codabench (or Université Paris-Saclay) claim any rights to use our data for its own purposes (e.g., internal research, model training, or commercial use)?
Terms Enforcement: We understand we can upload a terms.md file. Can you confirm that this file is the sole legal agreement governing the data usage between us and the participants, and that the platform itself does not supersede this with a blanket license?

Thank you for your time and assistance.

[Didayolo]

Dear @zyxnlp,
Thank you for your message.

I'll try to give you indicative answers, but I need to check this with the team as I have no expertise in law.
For reference, our privacy terms are available here: https://github.com/codalab/codabench/blob/master/documentation/PRIVACY.md

Ownership: Does the organizer (us) retain full copyright and ownership of all datasets and submission files uploaded to the platform?

Yes, I do think so. You retain copyright and ownership of all datasets, programs and submissions you upload to the platform, and can remove them at any time.

Usage Rights: Does Codabench (or Université Paris-Saclay) claim any rights to use our data for its own purposes (e.g., internal research, model training, or commercial use)?

I do not think so. Research may be conducted on general statistics of the platform and information publicly shared (competition description, leaderboard, etc.). However, all that is uploaded and kept private should not be used by the platform administrators on their own. Once again, that is just my comprehension and I'll confirm this information with the team as soon as possible.

Terms Enforcement: We understand we can upload a terms.md file. Can you confirm that this file is the sole legal agreement governing the data usage between us and the participants, and that the platform itself does not supersede this with a blanket license?

Yes, that is the spirit of how the "terms.md" is used. Each competition organizer can specify their own rules regarding the privacy of data and submissions.

I hope this helps. We are going to discuss this matter and come back to you again.
Don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.