Privacy Policy

Last Updated: February 1, 2023

MERL and its affiliates (collectively "us," "we," or "our") are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our customers and users ("you" or "your") who visit our website, including merl.com website (the "Website").

We have drafted this Privacy Policy to provide you with information on our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information (as defined below) when you use our Website. This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with our Cookie Policy and Terms and Conditions (merl.com/privacy/cookies).

Some jurisdictions may provide for additional privacy rights and disclosures to their residents or relevant data subjects that may apply to you in certain circumstances. For example, your Personal Information may be subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), the UK GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act (along with any implementing regulations and as may be amended, the "CCPA"), or other relevant data protection laws. If your personal information (as defined in our California Privacy Statement) is subject to the CCPA, please see our California Privacy Statement for additional disclosures, our Notice at Collection, and a description of your rights under the CCPA, available here (merl.com/privacy/california).

Information We Collect and How We Collect It

While using our Website or when you otherwise interact with us, we may collect certain information from or about you, including "Personal Information." When we use the term "Personal Information" we mean information that can help us directly or indirectly identify you, such as your name, email address, home address, telephone number, Internet Protocol ("IP") address, or other online identifiers, among other information. We may collect some of this information directly from you, automatically through your use of the Website, and from other sources.

Information Provided by You

We may collect Personal Information when you (i) purchase, send for repair, or return one of our products; (ii) contact us through available forms on the Website, via email, or through our customer service lines; (iii) complete surveys provided by us; (iv) post or share information on our Website; and (iv) create an account to use certain of our services.

Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect the following types of Personal Information, including:

  • Identifiers and Similar Information — Such as your first and last name, date of birth, social security number, driver's license number, passport number, online identifiers, or other similar identifiers, and account log-in information.
  • Contact Information — Including your personal email address, business email address, postal address, or phone number.
  • Demographic Information —- Such as your gender, age, citizenship, education, profession, or occupation.
  • Correspondence and Communications —- Including information provided by you when you contact us directly, respond to a survey, or interact with us on social media.
  • Responses to Surveys and Promotional Events —- Including responses to questions and interactions with us on social media, competitions, and at events or through surveys that we provide to you.
  • Geolocation Information — Such as information about your location or the location of your device.

Please note that depending on your jurisdiction, some of this information may be considered sensitive personal information or similarly defined information under certain data protection laws.

Information Collected Automatically

When you visit our Website or interact with us through other online media and advertisements, information about your visit and/or interaction is automatically logged though the use of various tracking tools like browser cookies and web beacons. Cookies are files with a small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and transferred to your device. We generally use cookies to collect information in order to improve our services for you. We may automatically collect Personal Information through our Website and these tools, including the following:

  • Log Data — This includes information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Website ("Log Data"). This Log Data may include information such as your computer's IP address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our Website that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics. When you access the Website by or through a mobile device, we may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device's unique device ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use, your location information, and other statistics.
  • Website Browsing Data — This includes information gathered while you browse our Website, including technical, usage, and navigational data that shows what pages you have visited and how long various features are used.
  • Device Information — Such as information about the device you use to access our Website, including the hardware model, operating system and version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information.

We may use third-party web analytics services on the Website, including Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to help us understand how people are using our Website. To find out more about how Google Analytics collects and processes data, please click here. Google Analytics has its own cookies that it uses to track and aggregate this information. You can prevent the use of Google Analytics relating to your use of our Website by downloading and installing the browser plugin available here.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. The Help feature on most browsers provides information on how to accept cookies, disable cookies, or to notify you when receiving a new cookie. You can also control cookies (i) through most browsers by changing your cookie settings, which are typically found in the "options" or "preferences" menu of your browser, and (ii) through various third-party tools, which can be found here.

Please note that if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some features of our Website, and we recommend that you leave them turned on.

Information from Other Sources

We may also obtain Personal Information from other sources, such as:

  • Indirectly from our distributors or sales agents.
  • Directly or indirectly from our service providers when providing us services or acting on our behalf.
  • Directly or indirectly from activity on our Website (merl.com), social media, or marketing efforts.

Why We Collect and Use Information

We may collect, use, or otherwise process Personal Information for various purposes, including:

  • Communicate and Respond to Your Questions — Such as to respond to any questions you send to us or where a problem with the Website or a service is reported.
  • Managing and Operating our Website — Including to keep our Website updated and relevant, to develop our business, and to inform our marketing strategy.
  • Security and Prevention and Detection of Fraud — For example, we may use information to protect our company, our customers, and our Website. This includes detecting security incidents and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity.
  • Compliance with Law — Such as compliance with legal and/or regulatory requirements or for the purpose of responding to a binding request from a public authority or court.
  • Contractual Obligations — For example, we may use your information in performing our contractual obligations to a customer or others and protecting legal rights.

Certain data protection laws may require that we have established a lawful basis or legal basis for our collection, use, disclosure, or other processing of your Personal Information. Where required by applicable data protection laws, we ensure that we have identified a lawful or legal basis under which such processing may occur. Depending on how you interact with us and our purpose for processing your Personal Information, such lawful or legal basis for processing Personal Information may include:

  • where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests;
  • to comply with certain legal and regulatory requirements;
  • depending on the circumstances, we may need to process your Personal Information for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or related pre-contractual steps; and
  • with your consent, as required by the GDPR.

How We Disclose Information

In order to run our business and provide services to you, we may disclose your Personal Information and other information to third parties, including the following:

  • Our affiliates
  • Services providers or other entities who perform services for us or on our behalf. For example, we may share information with vendors who operate our Website, run promotions, and send emails.
  • In order to comply with applicable law. For example, we may disclose your Personal Information where required to do so by law or subpoena or if we believe that such action is necessary to comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement or to protect the security or integrity of our Website.
  • To any relevant third-party acquirer(s), in the event that we sell or transfer all or any relevant portion of our business or assets.
  • With your consent or at your direction.

Do Not Track Disclosure

We support Do Not Track ("DNT"). DNT is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked.

You can enable or disable DNT by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.

Security

The security of your Personal Information is important to us, and we strive to implement and maintain reasonable, commercially acceptable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information we store, in order to protect it from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure.

However, please be aware that no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure, and we are unable to completely guarantee the security of the Personal Information we have collected from or about you.

How Long We Keep Your Information

We will only retain your Personal Information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any accounting, reporting requirements, or legal requirements and consistent with applicable privacy, data protection, and data retention laws. To determine the appropriate retention period for Personal Information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the Personal Information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your Personal Information, the purposes for which we process your Personal Information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Links to Other Sites

Our Website may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third party's site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit.

We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.

Children's Privacy

We do not knowingly solicit or collect Personal Information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe that we have inadvertently collected Personal Information from a child under 13 years old, please contact us using the information provided in Contact Us below. We will delete such information within a reasonable time.

International Transfers of Your Personal Information

We are an international company with our main operating location(s) in the U.S. As such, your Personal Information may be transferred, stored, or otherwise processed in the United States and other locations. When you provide Personal Information to us from outside of the U.S., please be aware that we will receive and process it in the U.S. and that U.S. data protection laws may be different from those of your country of residence. We may transfer the Personal Information we collect to other countries where we do business, which may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you originally provided the information. To the extent required by applicable law, when we transfer your Personal Information to recipients in other countries, we will take measures to protect that information. You can contact us through the information provided in Contact Us below for further information on specific mechanisms we utilize for transferring Personal Information and the countries to which such transfer may be made.

Your Rights and How to Exercise Them

Your Rights Under Certain Data Protection Laws

Depending on where you are located and applicable laws, you may have certain rights to your Personal Information. The rights described in this section are subject to exemptions and other limitations under applicable law.

Depending on applicable law, and subject to certain exemptions or limitations, your rights may include:

  • Access — To request access to the Personal Information we have about you.
  • Correction — To request that we correct incomplete or inaccurate Personal Information that we hold about you.
  • Deletion — In certain circumstances and subject to certain limitations, you can request that we delete your Personal Information.
  • Object to Processing — To object to our processing of Personal Information in certain circumstances, including where we process Personal Information for direct marketing purposes or where we have processed such data on the basis of our legitimate interests.
  • Request the Restriction of Processing — In certain circumstances, to request that we suspend the processing of your Personal Information.
  • Portability — To request the transfer of your Personal Information to another party in a digital form.
  • Withdraw Consent — Where you have provided your consent to our processing, you have the right to withdraw it at any time.
  • Lodge a Complaint with a Data Protection Authority — To lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authority or other relevant supervisory authority in the country of your residence, your place of work, or place of an alleged infringement, if you believe that the processing of your Personal Information infringes upon applicable data protection laws.

You may also have the following rights related to our marketing practices:

  • Opt Out of Receiving Our Marketing Emails — To stop receiving our promotional emails, follow the opt-out link in any of our promotional emails. This opt-out does not apply to transactional or informational emails (e.g., our communication in response to your request for information, products, or services from us) nor to disclosure to a third party that is acting on our behalf and under our instructions in support of our permitted uses of your Personal Information.
  • Control Cookies and Tracking Tools — As noted above in Information Collected Automatically, we may use cookies and other tracking tools. To learn how to manage your cookies preferences, please review Information Collected Automatically and our Cookies Policy (merl.com/privacy/cookies).

How to Exercise Your Rights

You can exercise applicable rights, as described above, through the following:

  • Calling us at 833-848-5252.
  • Email: information1[at]merl[dot]com.
  • Writing us at the address noted below.
  • Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories
    ATTN: Human Resources
    201 Broadway
    Cambridge, MA 02139-1955

Changes to This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of February 1, 2023 and will remain in effect except with respect to any changes in its provisions in the future, which will be in effect immediately after being posted on this page. We reserve the right to update or change our Privacy Policy at any time, and you should check this Privacy Policy periodically. Your continued use of the Website after we post any modifications to the Privacy Policy on this page will constitute your acknowledgment of the modifications and your consent to abide and be bound by the modified Privacy Policy. If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you either through the email address you have provided us or by placing a prominent notice on our Website.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us through any of the following:

  • Email: information1[at]merl[dot]com.
  • Writing us at the address noted below.
  • Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories
    ATTN: Human Resources
    201 Broadway
    Cambridge, MA 02139-1955