Intellectual Property Guidelines

Introduction

At The Center for Leadership Studies, we take great pride in and care of our intellectual property (IP). As an organization, we put a considerable amount of time, resources, energy, and effort into not only protecting our IP, but into correcting content inaccuracy and infringement within the marketplace. As the sole provider and source of Situational Leadership® training, we want to share some best practices and guidelines for anyone interested in sharing anything related to our IP.

First, if you found this page on our website or were directed to this page by someone from The Center for Leadership Studies, let us start by saying thank you! Thank you for your desire to write about the Situational Leadership® Model (or our other trademarks and/or copyrighted works). We sincerely appreciate you taking the additional step to ensure you are correctly writing, attributing, and referencing our work. Please use the below information as a guideline when using or mentioning our IP.

Below is an abbreviated list of our trademarked terms (or simply, “marks”):

  1. Situational Leadership®
  2. Situational Parenting©:
  3. Situational Selling®
  4. Isitlead® 
  5. Situational Coaching®
  6. Performance Readiness®

Please contact us for a complete list of our intellectual property

In addition to the above, our copyrights include all courses in our curricula, the content of our workshops, material, blogs, website posts, books, and more. The appearance, layout, color scheme, and design of The Center for Leadership Studies website are part of our protected trade dress. These are some of The Center for Leadership Studies’ intellectual property, and they are registered and owned by Leadership Studies, Inc., doing business as The Center for Leadership Studies (“CLS”). You may not use them without our prior written permission, except as authorized in this Intellectual Property Usage Guidelines.

If we think that your use of our intellectual property is in violation of any of our legal terms or these guidelines, or if we feel that your use isn’t in our best interest, we will pursue appropriate legal action.

Trademark Use

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination of these things that identifies a product or service.  A trademark will provide legal protection of such trademarked term(s).

Your use of any CLS marks should not suggest any sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement by us and you should not use any name or mark confusingly similar to our marks. This means that you can’t freely use our marks, including logos, on any material or form unless you receive written permission from CLS or the use falls under specific circumstances authorized by law.

About the Situational Leadership® Mark

With over 15 million leaders trained, the Situational Leadership® Model is the most successful and widely adopted leadership training model available. We understand (and love!) that many of our supporters, in the leadership industry or not, want to spread the word about the Situational Leadership® approach. Situational Leadership® is a distinguished brand and is a trademark. The Situational Leadership® program’s content is also copyrighted.

Before writing or posting anything about the Situational Leadership® mark, please carefully review the below information and guidelines.

You are authorized to use a trademark without prior permission, when, for example, you are mentioning the mark solely for informative purposes or to identify a specific product. Under these specific circumstances of usage, we want to inform you of the following ground rules applying to our marks. Our intent is to use the Situational Leadership® mark as a reference; however, the following will apply to all CLS marks:

  • Always and throughout your content, use the mark with its appropriate registration mark “®,” (e.g., Situational Leadership®)
  • Always capitalize our trademarks (e.g., Situational Leadership®, Situational Leadership® Model)
  • Properly attribute the mark to CLS with a notice at the first use of the mark
    • “Situational Leadership® is a registered trademark of Leadership Studies, Inc. dba The Center for Leadership Studies.”
  • Use as an adjective and not a standalone noun except in footers:
    • Correct: “The CLS program is based on the Situational Leadership® Model.”
    • Incorrect: “The CLS program is based on Situational Leadership®.”
  • Please link to our Situational Leadership® page (https://situational.com/situational-leadership/) within your piece of content for any variation of the below text:
    • Situational Leadership®
    • Situational Leadership® Model

If you are mentioning the mark solely for informative purposes or to identify a specific product, please refrain from doing any of the following:

  • Do not abbreviate Situational Leadership® as SitLead, SL, or any other shortcut
  • Do not combine any of our marks with your name, your marks, or any generic terms
  • Do not Incorporate any of our marks into your name or logo or any other photo and/or shapes
  • Do not create a stylized version of our marks
  • Do not change the color or otherwise modify our logo
  • Do not associate our marks with any vulgar, obscene, indecent, scandalous or unlawful material
  • Do not translate our marks into other languages (our marks are registered internationally and in localized terms)
  • Do not register a domain name that incorporates or is similar to our marks
  • You may not use our marks in any advertising
  • You may not scrape or copy photographs, images, or illustrations off our website for your use

Looking to use one of our marks? Get in touch with us at info@situational.com or complete our “Contact Us” form.

Copyright Use

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship. Copyrighted works include music, movies, illustrations, blog posts, printed materials, and any form of material that expresses an original idea. A copyright will give the owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, reproduce, display, and license the work.

For more than 50 years, The Center for Leadership Studies has been at the forefront of leadership training and organizational development. We create and produce all our programs and their accompanying materials. We have published books and countless articles. We are heavily invested in research and daily content creation.

You must request express permission to reproduce any of our available work. We allow the use of our works in many different scenarios, including, for academic purposes.

Here are some additional ways you can reference our copyrighted works:

  • Feel free to share links to any of our content by email and social media
  • Feel free to reference or quote up to 75 words of any of our available text content in your own blog articles, presentations, documents, etc. as long as you honor the following attribution statement:
    • “Article Title”, “Date of Publication”, followed by “is copyright protected and an original work of Leadership Studies, Inc. dba The Center for Leadership Studies”
  • If you are referencing or citing a CLS-published blog article, please hyperlink to the URL of the specific blog article you’re referencing
  • If you are referencing or citing a CLS-published blog article about Situational Leadership® content, please use the anchor text of “Situational Leadership®” and link it to this page: https://situational.com/situational-leadership/
  • If you have received materials for participating in a workshop delivered by CLS, a CLS partner or a CLS client, your participant material is for personal consumption and use. Reproduction, sharing or creation of derivative work is not permitted
  • If you have been certified in any of our programs. The use of the administrative material received is only permitted under a license agreement and when participant materials are purchased. Reproduction, sharing or creation of derivative work is not permitted

Please, do not claim our content as your original ideas or commercialize it under any circumstances. Any use not authorized herein or through written permission from CLS could be considered a copyright violation.

About the Situational Leadership® Model

Our logo represents the Situational Leadership® methodology and is a registered trademark of CLS. In addition, the Situational Leadership® Model image (the one tracing the framework used to analyze each situation and its task and relationship behavior) is a trademark and a copyrighted work of CLS. The Situational Leadership® Model references the Performance Readiness® Levels and continuum, which are important parts of the model and also registered trademarks.

Reproduction of either our logo or the Situational Leadership® Model requires prior express permission from CLS. Both graphics are registered trademarks of CLS.

Our logo:

The Center for Leadership Studies Logo

The Situational Leadership® Model:

The Four Leadership Styles of The Situational Leadership(R) Model

All the below versions of the Situational Leadership® Model are an unauthorized reproduction of our original copyrighted work and an improper use of our trademarks. Please refrain from reproducing or creating copies of our intellectual property. Such forms of unauthorized reproduction could confuse consumers into believing they are purchasing and consuming genuine versions of the Situational Leadership® program.

Incorrect Usage of The Situational Leadership Model

If you’re looking to reference any of our copyrighted work, including the Situational Leadership® Model, get in touch with us at info@situational.com or complete our “Contact Us” form.

 

For partners and other CLS affiliates:

If you have partnered with The Center for Leadership Studies under any form of agreement, your use of our intellectual property may be governed by your agreement, and any additional marketing agreement, handbook, or guidelines provided by CLS.

If you want to use our marks and/or copyrighted works outside the scope of your agreement with us, you will need to seek written permission from CLS. Please submit those requests by completing our “Contact Us” form.

Once again, thank you for taking the extra step to properly reference and cite our intellectual property. If you have any questions or need clarification, please complete our contact us form and a representative from our legal department will review your request and get back to you as soon as possible.