Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using the Encypher platform, APIs, plugins, extensions, command-line tools, and websites (collectively, the "Service"), you ("Customer", "you", or "your") agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you accept on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization.

If you do not agree, do not access or use the Service.

2. Service Description

Encypher is content authenticity verification infrastructure, independent, third-party measurement for content provenance. The Service enables organizations to:

• Sign Content: Generate C2PA-compliant signatures and embeddings for text and other media you own or are authorized to sign
• Granular Tracking: Create cryptographic proofs at document, block, and sentence-level granularity
• Verify Content: Independently verify the authenticity and integrity of signed content, free of charge, across all supported media types
• Express Rights: Attach machine-readable rights metadata (including AI-use terms) to signed content and export it to standard formats (e.g., RSL at /.well-known/rsl)
• Certificate Management: Automated certificate lifecycle management for COSE signatures

What the verification Service is NOT. The Encypher verification and measurement Service is not a content repository, content marketplace, content licensor, or AI-training data provider. We do not sell, license, sublicense, syndicate, or train AI models on your content, and we acquire no such rights through these Terms. Optional, separately-accepted network programs (Section 6.7) let you choose to make your verified inventory discoverable or to invite Encypher to broker on your behalf; those programs are not part of the verification Service, are off unless you opt in, and never transfer rights in your content. (See Sections 6.1, 6.5, and 6.7.)

3. Account Registration and API Keys

3.1 Account Creation

To use the Service you must provide accurate registration information, maintain credential security, keep your information current, and accept responsibility for activity under your account.

3.2 API Keys

• API keys are confidential and must not be shared
• You are responsible for all usage of your API keys
• Report lost or compromised keys immediately to legal@encypher.com
• We may revoke API keys for violation of these Terms

3.3 Organization Types

Publishers; Legal/Finance; AI Labs; Enterprise; and individual/self-serve users.

4. Service Tiers and Usage Limits

4.1 Tiers

Free / Self-Serve (no negotiated contract): Document-level and supported media signing, public verification, WordPress plugin, browser extension, API, CLI. Monthly volume cap (see published limits). Text and image invisible watermarking included.

Under Agreement (Enterprise / Coalition): Implementation, white-glove onboarding, SLA, uncapped volume, and optional compute-intensive add-ons (signal-domain audio/video watermarking, print-survivable markers) under separate ordering documents.

4.2 Rate Limits and Quotas

Rate limits and monthly quotas are enforced per API key. Quotas reset monthly and do not roll over. Systematic circumvention may result in suspension. Free-tier quotas are not purchasable; overages are available under agreement. Signing, embedding, and verification operations are metered, and usage-based, volume-based, and throughput-based pricing may apply under an applicable order or agreement.

5. Acceptable Use Policy

5.1 Permitted Uses

Sign and verify content you own or are authorized to sign; track provenance; express rights; generate evidence; comply with regulatory requirements; prevent content theft.

5.2 Prohibited Uses

You may NOT: sign false, misleading, or fraudulent content; impersonate another party; sign content you lack rights to; circumvent rate/quota limits; reverse engineer or extract cryptographic keys; interfere with Service operation or security; sign illegal content; resell or redistribute the Service without authorization; or use automated abuse tooling.

5.3 Content Responsibility

You are solely responsible for content you sign. We do not review, approve, or endorse signed content and are not liable for it. You represent and warrant that you hold all rights necessary to sign the content and to grant the limited licenses in Section 6.

6. Content, Data, and Rights

This Section draws a hard line between (a) your Content, which you own and we never license or commercialize, and (b) Verification Data and Usage Data derived from your use of the Service, which we may aggregate, de-identify, and commercialize as measurement infrastructure.

6.1 Your Content; Ownership

You retain all right, title, and interest in and to the content you submit, sign, or verify using the Service ("Customer Content"). Encypher claims no ownership of Customer Content and acquires no license to publish, distribute, sublicense, sell, syndicate, train artificial-intelligence models on, or otherwise exploit Customer Content. Encypher's license to Customer Content is limited to the technical operations necessary to provide the Service to you, ingesting, hashing, signing, embedding, generating and storing manifests, and returning results, and terminates as set out in Section 6.3. Encypher will never broker, license, transfer, or make available your Customer Content to any third party except (i) the de-identified/derived data described in Section 6.5, (ii) the verification metadata described in Section 6.6, or (iii) where you knowingly opt into an optional network program (Section 6.7) or enter a separate written agreement, none of which transfers any right in the content itself.

6.2 Content Minimization; Not a Repository

We are designed to minimize retention of Customer Content itself:

• Wherever technically feasible, the Service operates on derived artifacts (cryptographic hashes, Merkle nodes, signatures, manifests) rather than retaining the underlying content. Hashes and signatures are one-way and do not reconstitute Customer Content.
• Where the Service must temporarily process Customer Content to sign it, that content is retained only for the minimum duration necessary to complete signing and is not used to build a content corpus.
• We do not maintain Customer Content as a searchable, licensable, or trainable repository, and we contractually disclaim any such use (Section 2, Section 6.1).
• "Public verification data" (Section 6.6) consists of metadata and hashes, not the substance of Customer Content (e.g., sentence hashes, not sentences).

6.3 Content Retention

• Active accounts: Customer Content retained only as long as necessary to provide signing/verification; derived manifests and metadata retained for verification continuity.
• Deleted accounts: Any retained Customer Content deleted within 90 days. Derived verification metadata and public verification records persist per Section 6.6 and the Privacy Policy.
• See the Privacy Policy for the full retention schedule.

6.4 Data Export

You may request a complete export of your account data and verification metadata at any time, in machine-readable format, within 30 days, at no charge.

6.5 Verification Data and Usage Data; License

Separate and distinct from Customer Content, you grant Encypher a worldwide, royalty-free license to collect, generate, store, reproduce, aggregate, de-identify, anonymize, and analyze Verification Data and Usage Data in order to operate, secure, and improve the Service and to create the analytics products described below.

• "Verification Data" means data generated by signing and verification: cryptographic hashes, Merkle structures, signatures, C2PA manifests, certificate and timestamp metadata, signing and verification events, rights-metadata values you attach, and content-spread/detection signals (where, when, and how often signed assets are detected, verified, or referenced across the web and partner systems).
• "Usage Data" means API/usage, performance, configuration, and technical telemetry.

Two-tier rights, the line that keeps us out of the content business:

1. Raw Verification Data and Usage Data (before anonymization) are processed only as described in the Privacy Policy and subject to all applicable privacy rights (including objection, restriction, and erasure of any personal data). Your privacy rights are not waived or overridden by this Section. Where any element is personal data, we process it under the lawful bases and the Anonymization Standard in the Privacy Policy, calibrated to the most conservative applicable regime.
2. Analytics Products, analytics, benchmarks, indices, and industry-measurement products that Encypher derives only after the underlying data has been aggregated and anonymized to the Privacy Policy's Anonymization Standard. Because Analytics Products contain no personal data and no Customer Content, Encypher owns and may commercialize them, and your account deletion does not affect Analytics Products already created. (Operationally: Encypher's rights in such anonymized products are perpetual and assignable precisely because they no longer relate to you, your content, or any person.)

Verification Data and Usage Data expressly exclude the substance of Customer Content; nothing in this Section grants any right in or to Customer Content. Encypher will not sell or disclose to third parties any asset-level or customer-identifiable Verification Data or Usage Data without your separate, affirmative opt-in.

6.6 Public Verification Record

You acknowledge that the purpose of signing is to make authenticity independently verifiable. Encypher may operate a public verification record for assets you sign and permit any third party to verify those assets at no charge, across all media types. The default public record is minimal, a verification identifier, timestamp, certificate/validity status, and the non-reversible cryptographic commitments needed to verify. Additional fields (document title, URL, organization name, attached rights terms, full manifest) are publisher-selected display fields, off by default, and dissociable on request. The public record exposes verification metadata and hashes only: never the substance of Customer Content. Minimal verification records may persist indefinitely because removing them would defeat the verifiability the Service exists to provide; you may dissociate your organization identity from a record subject to the limits in the Privacy Policy.

6.7 Optional Network Programs: Not Part of the Verification Service

The programs in this Section are optional and separate from the verification Service. They are off by default and take effect only when an authorized administrator of your organization affirmatively opts in on a separate, clearly labeled screen (a "Network Participation" acceptance), never by mere use of the Service, and never via the general click-through of these Terms. They apply only to assets you sign while a program is in effect, may be withdrawn prospectively at any time, grant no license to or interest in your Customer Content, and: notwithstanding Section 14: never permit Encypher to enjoin, block, or delay any licensing transaction you choose to do. Declining them does not limit your use of the verification Service in any way.

6.7.1 Verification Continuity (buyer-funded, optional). Encypher offers compliance-verification of licensing deals as a service the buyer/licensee (e.g., the AI company) contracts and pays for, not you. If you opt into this program, you agree to inform counterparties that Encypher verification is available and to not unreasonably withhold cooperation where a buyer elects Encypher verification; you owe no fee and no revenue share, and you may use any verification vendor a deal requires. This is not a requirement to designate Encypher and creates no obligation enforceable against your choice of counterparties.

6.7.2 Brokerage Right of First Offer (optional). If, and only if, you opt into the brokerage program, then before engaging a third party to broker licensing of assets you signed via Encypher you grant Encypher a right of first offer to broker, which lapses for a given deal if Encypher does not accept within a stated response window (default 10 business days). This is a non-exclusive, declinable right of first offer, not an exclusive grant and not a license to your content. Any brokerage commission applies only under a separate, signed brokerage agreement; opting in creates no publisher-side fee, revenue share, lien, or exclusivity by itself. You remain free to broker directly or elsewhere where Encypher declines, fails to respond, or where a pre-existing broker relationship applies.

6.7.3 Collective Rights Registry (optional, opt-in). If you opt in (per organization or per asset), assets you sign and the rights metadata you attach may be listed in Encypher's collective rights registry, making verified inventory and your stated terms discoverable to potential licensees. Listing conveys no license to Customer Content and authorizes no use of it. This discoverable listing is separate from the public verification record in Section 6.6, and you may withdraw a listing at any time.

6.8 Default Rights Posture

Where you do not specify rights, the Service applies the most-protective default for AI-use permissions (AI training, AI inference, and data mining default to not permitted / unset, never to permit-all). Permitting any AI use is an explicit, logged, per-asset or per-organization action by you. Nothing in the Service or these Terms permits AI use of your content by default.

7. Intellectual Property

7.1 Service Ownership

Encypher retains all rights, title, and interest in the Service. These Terms grant you no IP rights in the Service. "Encypher", logos, and trademarks are owned by Encypher.

7.2 Feedback

Feedback, suggestions, or ideas you provide may be used by us without compensation or attribution.

7.3 Derived Data and Models

Analytics, benchmarks, indices, aggregated statistics, and other products Encypher creates from Verification Data and Usage Data under Section 6.5 are owned by Encypher. This ownership extends only to such derived/aggregated products and never to Customer Content.

8. Payment Terms (Under-Agreement Tiers)

8.1 Fees

Fees are set by your tier/order; in USD; non-refundable except as required by law.

8.2 Billing

Monthly or annual/custom per agreement; payment due within 30 days; late payments accrue 1.5% monthly interest.

8.3 Price Changes

30 days' notice; applies to subsequent periods; you may cancel before an increase takes effect.

8.4 Taxes

Fees exclude applicable taxes, which are your responsibility except taxes on our income.

9. Warranties and Disclaimers

9.1 Limited Warranty

The Service will substantially conform to its documentation and be provided in a professional manner using industry-standard security practices.

9.2 Disclaimer

EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY PROVIDED IN 9.1, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE OPERATION, ACCURACY OF RESULTS, AND SECURITY OF DATA.

9.3 Cryptographic Limitations

Digital signatures are tamper-evident, not tamper-proof; depend on key security; we are not liable for compromised keys or certificates; verification depends on the integrity of the verification process.

10. Limitation of Liability

10.1 Cap

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) FEES YOU PAID IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR (B) $1,000 USD.

10.2 Exclusion

WE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES; LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR OPPORTUNITIES; COST OF SUBSTITUTE SERVICES; OR DAMAGES FROM USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE.

10.3 Exceptions

The limitations do not apply to indemnification obligations, IP infringement, fraud or willful misconduct, or liability that cannot be excluded by law.

11. Indemnification

You will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Encypher and its affiliates and their officers, directors, employees, and agents from claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your use of the Service, content you sign, your violation of these Terms, your violation of third-party rights, or your violation of applicable law.

12. Term and Termination

12.1 Term

These Terms commence on first access and continue until terminated.

12.2 Termination by You

Terminate any time by closing your account; no refunds for prepaid fees; data export available for 90 days.

12.3 Termination by Us

We may suspend or terminate immediately for violation of these Terms, non-payment, security risk, or as required by law.

12.4 Effect of Termination

Access ceases; outstanding fees become due; we delete retained Customer Content after the retention period. Public verification records (the minimal record in Section 6.6) and Encypher's rights in anonymized Analytics Products (Section 6.5(2)) survive (necessary for independent verification and for already-built, no-longer-personal measurement products). Raw Verification Data and Usage Data remain subject to the Privacy Policy's deletion and objection rights. Sections 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, and 14 survive.

13. Service Level Agreement (Under-Agreement Tiers Only)

99.9% monthly uptime commitment (excluding scheduled maintenance), service credits of 10%/25%/50% at the stated thresholds, claimed within 30 days, capped at 50% of monthly fees, with standard exclusions.

14. General Provisions

Governing law: Delaware, USA. Disputes: informal resolution, then binding AAA arbitration in Wilmington, Delaware, with a class-action waiver; carve-outs for IP, AUP violations, and injunctive relief. Consumer carve-out: the arbitration clause, class-action waiver, and US-forum selection do not apply where prohibited by mandatory consumer-protection law, individual/self-serve consumers in the EU, UK, and California retain any non-waivable local forum, court, and collective-redress rights. Notwithstanding the injunctive-relief carve-out, no provision of these Terms permits Encypher to enjoin, block, or delay a customer's licensing transaction (see Section 6.7).

We may modify these Terms with 30 days' notice for material changes; continued use constitutes acceptance. You may not assign without consent; we may assign to an affiliate/successor. Entire agreement; severability; no waiver; force majeure; export compliance; U.S. Government "commercial item" rights (FAR 2.101 / 52.227-19).

15. Contact

• Legal: legal@encypher.com
• Support: support@encypher.com
• Privacy: privacy@encypher.com
• Abuse: abuse@encypher.com
• Website: https://encypher.com