Terms of Service

1. Definitions

The capitalised words, and what they mean everywhere in this Agreement.

• "Contribution" means anything you submit through the Service, including a task's problem statement, environment definition, data files, reference solution, tests, metadata, review notes, and any note or message you attach to a submission.
• "Accepted" describes a Contribution that Blotdle has marked accepted at expert review in the Service. A Contribution is not Accepted while it is under review, sent back, or rejected.
• "Delivery" means a batch of tasks that Blotdle assigns to experts in the Service, together with the per-task fee, the deadline, and the task guide shown for it.
• "Benchmark" means any evaluation suite, dataset, or publication that Blotdle or its Partners assemble from Contributions, in whole or in part, now or in the future.
• "Holdout" means a Contribution that Blotdle decides to keep private rather than publish, so that a Benchmark keeps a set of tasks that no AI system has seen.
• "Partner" means an entity Blotdle contracts with to fund, develop, evaluate, distribute, or use a Benchmark, including AI laboratories.
• "Blotdle Materials" means the Service, the task guide, example tasks, rubrics, templates, review notes written by Blotdle, and everything else Blotdle makes available to you other than your own Contributions.
• "Confidential Information" has the meaning in Section 7.

2. Eligibility and your account

You must be an invited adult, use one account in your own name, and not be subject to sanctions.

The Service is invitation only. You may use it only if Blotdle has added your email address to its experts list, and only to contribute to and review Benchmarks. Blotdle reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time.

You must be at least 18 years old and at least the age of majority in the country where you live. You must be legally able to enter into this Agreement and to receive payment for services in that country, and you must hold any work authorisation your country requires.

You represent that neither you nor any bank or payment account you use is on a sanctions or prohibited-party list maintained by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, or the United Nations, that you are not located in a country or region subject to comprehensive United States sanctions, and that you will not export Confidential Information to any such destination.

You sign in with a Google account or a one-time code sent to your email address. You may have only one account, it must be in your own legal name, and any payment account you register must be in your own name. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in account and mailbox secure, for every action taken from your session, and for telling us promptly at the address in Section 19 if you believe your access has been compromised. You may not share, sell, or transfer your access or let anyone else use the Service as you.

Blotdle may ask you to verify your identity, age, location, or professional credentials, and may run sanctions and background screening where the law allows, before or during your participation. Refusing a reasonable verification request may lead to suspension.

3. Independent contractor

You work for yourself. You choose what to work on and when, you use your own equipment, and you handle your own taxes.

You perform services under this Agreement as an independent contractor and not as an employee, agent, partner, or joint venturer of Blotdle. Nothing in this Agreement creates an employment, partnership, agency, or joint-venture relationship. You have no authority to bind Blotdle, and you will not hold yourself out as its employee or representative.

You decide which Deliveries to accept, and when, where, and how to do the work. Blotdle does not set your hours, does not guarantee any minimum volume of work, and does not require you to accept any Delivery. You supply your own equipment, software, internet access, and workspace, and you bear your own expenses. You are not eligible for employee benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers' compensation from Blotdle.

This Agreement is non-exclusive. You are free to work for anyone else, including competitors of Blotdle, subject only to your confidentiality and embargo obligations in Section 7.

You are solely responsible for all income taxes, self-employment taxes, social contributions, value added or goods and services taxes, business registrations, and licences that apply to you wherever you live. Blotdle does not withhold taxes from fees except where the law requires. Before your first payment Blotdle may require a completed tax form, such as an IRS Form W-9 or W-8BEN. Blotdle will report payments to United States persons on IRS Form 1099-NEC where required, may apply backup withholding if a valid form is not on file, and for non-United States persons may withhold and report on Form 1042-S as the law requires.

Nothing in this Agreement waives any right you have under the California Freelance Worker Protection Act, the New York Freelance Isn't Free Act, or a comparable law where you live, and any purported waiver of such a right is void.

4. Your Contributions

A Contribution is a complete benchmark task. You are responsible for it, and you promise it is yours to give, honest, and free of other people's secrets and data.

A complete Contribution is a benchmark task: a problem statement, the environment it runs in, a reference solution that genuinely solves it, tests that genuinely check it, any data files, and the metadata the task guide asks for, uploaded as a single archive with a note to reviewers.

You are responsible for your Contributions and any harm resulting from them. If you include material you did not create, you are responsible for ensuring you have the right to include it and for complying with any applicable licences.

Each time you submit a Contribution you represent and warrant to Blotdle that:

• you are legally entitled to grant the licences in Section 5. If your employer or institution has rights to intellectual property that you create, including your Contributions, you have received permission to make Contributions on its behalf, or it has waived such rights for your Contributions to Blotdle;
• each Contribution is your original creation, except for material you have clearly identified as coming from a third party together with complete details of its source and of any licence or other restriction, including related patents and trademarks, of which you are personally aware;
• every data file and every piece of third-party software the Contribution depends on may lawfully be redistributed under the outbound licence named in Section 5, or is identified in the Contribution as an exception;
• the Contribution contains no confidential information of your employer, institution, clients, or anyone else, no personal data about other people, no protected health information, and no data obtained under terms that forbid the use described in Section 5;
• the reference solution honestly solves the problem, the tests honestly check it, and the task was not designed to be trivially passed, to leak its own answer, or to be solvable without the work it claims to require;
• to your knowledge after reasonable diligence, the problem and its solution are not already publicly available and are not copied from, and do not substantially reproduce, a task in any existing benchmark, textbook, competition, or published problem set, unless you disclose that in the Contribution;
• you have disclosed any use of AI tools in accordance with Section 8;
• the metadata you enter, including the relevant experience and conflicts of interest fields, is accurate and complete;
• the Contribution contains no malware, credentials, or anything designed to damage, exfiltrate from, or gain unauthorised access to any system.

You agree to notify Blotdle of any facts or circumstances of which you become aware that would make these representations inaccurate in any respect.

Except for the representations above, you provide your Contributions on an "as is" basis, without warranties or conditions of any kind, and you are not expected to provide support for them except to the extent you wish to.

Blotdle may run automated and human checks on Contributions, including with AI models, and may refuse or remove any Contribution that violates applicable law or this Agreement. Those checks do not relieve you of the representations above.

5. Licence to your Contributions

You keep your copyright. You give Blotdle, and everyone Blotdle distributes to, a permanent licence to use your task. Accepted tasks are published openly and licensed to AI laboratories, including for training. You may reuse your own published task.

You own your Contributions. Subject to the terms of this Agreement, you hereby grant to Blotdle and to recipients of material distributed by Blotdle a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright licence to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contributions and such derivative works.

Subject to the terms of this Agreement, you hereby grant to Blotdle and to recipients of material distributed by Blotdle a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this paragraph) patent licence to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer your Contributions, where such licence applies only to those patent claims licensable by you that are necessarily infringed by your Contributions alone or by combination of your Contributions with the Benchmark to which they were submitted. If any entity institutes patent litigation against you or any other entity alleging that your Contribution, or the Benchmark to which you have contributed, constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licences granted to that entity under this Agreement for that Contribution or Benchmark terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

You retain all moral rights to your Contributions, including the rights of integrity and attribution. However, you waive these rights and agree not to assert them against Blotdle, its Partners, or recipients of material distributed by Blotdle, to enable them to reasonably exercise the rights granted in this Section, but not otherwise. To the extent this waiver is not enforceable under applicable law, you grant Blotdle the rights it needs to use your Contributions without attribution and to make reasonable adaptations of them.

So that you know exactly what happens to an Accepted Contribution, Blotdle discloses the following. Accepted Contributions are edited as needed, included in a Benchmark, and published under the Apache License, Version 2.0, or under another open licence that Blotdle names for the Delivery before you submit. Benchmarks are also licensed to Partners, including commercial AI laboratories, who may use them to evaluate, train, fine-tune, and improve AI systems, and Blotdle may be paid for that. Blotdle may select some Accepted Contributions as Holdouts and keep them private indefinitely so that a Benchmark keeps unseen tasks. The fee you receive under Section 6 is the same whether a Contribution is published or held out.

The licences in this Section are granted when you submit and survive rejection, termination of your access, and any later request to withdraw. Once a Contribution has been published in a Benchmark it cannot be withdrawn, and copies held by others are outside Blotdle's control. Blotdle is not obliged to use, publish, or pay for a Contribution that is not Accepted, but may retain it under these licences.

Because the licence is non-exclusive, you remain free to use, teach, and republish your own Contribution after Blotdle has published the Benchmark that contains it. Until then, and indefinitely for a Holdout, the embargo in Section 7 applies.

An Accepted Contribution is published with the author name and organisation you enter in its metadata, unless you ask Blotdle to omit them before publication. Your email address and profile link are published only as you entered them and may be omitted on request. Where a Benchmark results in an academic paper, Blotdle may invite contributors of Accepted Contributions to be co-authors; co-authorship is at the discretion of the paper's authors. Blotdle decides the form of attribution.

If a published Contribution turns out to be flawed, or its underlying data can no longer be shared, Blotdle may correct, annotate, or retract it. Blotdle will credit you for the correction where you provide it.

If you send Blotdle suggestions, ideas, or feedback about the Service or a Benchmark, Blotdle may use them without restriction or compensation.

6. Review, acceptance, and payment

A Blotdle engineer and a field expert review each task. You are paid a fixed fee per Accepted task, within 30 days after the end of the month it was accepted. You can dispute a rejection.

Every Contribution is reviewed by Blotdle and by an expert in its field. Either may accept it, reject it, or send it back with notes for another attempt. Blotdle aims to reach a decision within 45 days of each submission and will tell you if a review will take longer. Review outcomes, the rubric applied, and the number of attempts allowed are at Blotdle's sole discretion, and Blotdle may reject a Contribution for any reason, including that a similar task already exists.

If your Contribution is rejected, you may dispute the decision by writing to the address in Section 19 within 7 days after the decision, stating why you believe the task meets the Delivery's requirements. Blotdle will respond within 14 days. Blotdle's decision on a dispute is final.

For each Delivery the Service states the tasks requested, the per-task fee, the deadline, and the task guide that applies. Blotdle pays the fee shown for the Delivery when it was assigned to you, and will not change it for that Delivery once assigned. Blotdle may set a different fee for a new Delivery. Fees are payable once, on acceptance, regardless of how many attempts the task took. No fee is owed for a Contribution that is rejected, withdrawn, abandoned, or sent back and not resubmitted.

Blotdle pays fees no later than 30 days after the end of the calendar month in which the Contribution was Accepted, by the payment method Blotdle offers, in United States dollars unless Blotdle says otherwise. You must give Blotdle the tax and payment information it needs within 15 days after your first Accepted Contribution, and a payment may be delayed until that information is received. Currency conversion costs, bank charges, and exchange-rate movements are your responsibility. Fees are the entire compensation for your Contributions and the licences in Section 5.

Blotdle may delay or suspend a payment while it investigates a suspected breach of this Agreement, fraud, or a sanctions concern, and will tell you that it has done so. If Blotdle determines that an Accepted Contribution breached Section 4 or Section 8, was submitted fraudulently, or was Accepted by mistake, Blotdle may withhold the fee, set it off against other amounts owed to you, or require you to repay it. Blotdle will first give you written notice describing the basis and 14 days to respond, and will not seek repayment more than twelve months after the fee was paid except in cases of fraud.

7. Confidentiality and embargo

Keep unpublished tasks, other experts' work, and Blotdle's internal material to yourself. Do not publish or paste a task anywhere until Blotdle publishes it.

"Confidential Information" means Blotdle Materials, other experts' Contributions, review notes, Delivery fees and specifications, the identity of Partners, and anything else you learn through the Service that is not public, whether marked confidential or not. It does not include information that is or becomes public without your breach, that you knew before receiving it from Blotdle, that you develop independently without using Blotdle's information, or that you rightfully receive from a third party without a duty of confidence.

You will hold Confidential Information in strict confidence, use it only to perform under this Agreement, and not disclose it to anyone else. If the law compels you to disclose Confidential Information, you will give Blotdle prompt notice where lawful and disclose only what is required. When your access ends, or when Blotdle asks, you will delete Confidential Information in your possession, including copies in cloud storage, except your own Contributions.

A Benchmark is useful only while its answers are unknown to the systems it measures. Until Blotdle publishes the Benchmark that contains it, you must not publish, post, upload, share, or otherwise disclose any Contribution, including its solution or tests, anywhere outside the Service. This includes pasting it into a public or third-party AI service, a code repository, a preprint, a lecture, or a class assignment. For a Holdout this embargo lasts indefinitely, and Blotdle will tell you if a Contribution has been selected as a Holdout.

Your obligations under this Section last for five years after your access ends, and indefinitely for trade secrets, Holdouts, and any Contribution that Blotdle has not yet published. You acknowledge that a breach of this Section would cause Blotdle irreparable harm for which damages would be an inadequate remedy, and that Blotdle may seek injunctive relief in addition to any other remedy.

Notice under the United States Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b): an individual will not be held criminally or civilly liable under any federal or state trade secret law for the disclosure of a trade secret that is made in confidence to a federal, state, or local government official or to an attorney solely for the purpose of reporting or investigating a suspected violation of law, or that is made in a complaint or other document filed in a lawsuit or other proceeding, if such filing is made under seal.

8. Use of AI tools

You may use AI tools to help, but you must say so, you must check the work yourself, and you must keep your drafts for 90 days.

Blotdle does not forbid the use of AI tools in preparing a Contribution, but an undisclosed AI-generated task is a defect that can poison a Benchmark. You must disclose in the Contribution whether and how you used any AI model or AI-assisted tool, including for drafting the problem, writing the solution or tests, or generating data. You must personally verify that the problem, solution, and tests are correct, and you remain responsible for the representations in Section 4 regardless of any tool you used.

Blotdle may forbid AI assistance for a particular Delivery in the task guide, in which case that rule applies to Contributions for that Delivery.

You will keep your drafts, notes, and working materials for each Contribution for at least 90 days after submission and provide them to Blotdle on request. Blotdle may use technical measures to detect undisclosed AI use. If Blotdle determines that a Contribution relied on undisclosed AI use, Blotdle may reject it, withhold or recover the fee under Section 6, and suspend or terminate your access.

9. Acceptable use

The things you must not do on the Service.

You agree not to:

• access or attempt to access any account, data, or part of the Service that is not yours;
• probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service, or interfere with its operation or the infrastructure that runs Contributions;
• submit anything that contains malware, that attempts to escape, exhaust, or misuse the execution environment, or that contacts external services without disclosing it;
• impersonate any person, misrepresent your identity, location, qualifications, affiliation, or conflicts of interest, use a VPN or other means to misrepresent your location, or submit under more than one account;
• review, rate, or comment on a Contribution in which you have an undisclosed interest, or collude with other experts to influence review outcomes;
• use Confidential Information or Blotdle Materials in the development of a competing benchmark or dataset;
• copy, redistribute, scrape, or reverse engineer Blotdle Materials, or use automated means to access the Service other than the tools Blotdle provides or documents;
• use the Service for anything unlawful or in breach of this Agreement.

10. Termination

You can leave at any time. Blotdle can end your access at any time. Fees already earned are still paid, and the licences and confidentiality obligations continue.

You may stop using the Service at any time by writing to the address in Section 19. Blotdle has the right to suspend or terminate your access to all or any part of the Service at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately.

On termination your right to use the Service ends. Blotdle may delete your unaccepted Contributions, and will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with its legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce its agreements. Fees already earned for Accepted Contributions remain payable unless Section 6 allows Blotdle to withhold them.

All provisions of this Agreement which, by their nature, should survive termination will survive termination, including without limitation the licences in Section 5, amounts owed under Section 6, confidentiality and embargo, warranty disclaimers, indemnity, limitations of liability, and dispute resolution.

11. Blotdle Materials and copyright complaints

Blotdle owns the Service and its materials. Tell us if you think something on it infringes your copyright.

Blotdle and its licensors own and reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Blotdle Materials, including the Service's design, code, text, and trademarks. You may use Blotdle Materials only to contribute to and review Benchmarks through the Service. This Agreement does not grant you any right to use Blotdle's name or logos.

If you believe that content on the Service or in a published Benchmark violates your copyright, please contact us at founders@blotdle.com with the material you believe infringes, the work it infringes, your contact details, and a statement made in good faith that the use is not authorised. There may be legal consequences for sending a false or frivolous takedown notice. Before sending a takedown request, you must consider legal uses such as fair use and licensed uses. Blotdle may remove or amend any Contribution in response to a complaint, may share the complaint with the contributor concerned, and will terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

12. Disclaimer of warranties

We provide the Service as is, and we make no promises or guarantees about it. Please read this section carefully; you should understand what to expect.

Blotdle provides the Service and Blotdle Materials "as is" and "as available," without warranty of any kind. Without limiting this, we expressly disclaim all warranties, whether express, implied or statutory, regarding the Service including without limitation any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, security, accuracy and non-infringement.

Blotdle does not warrant that the Service will meet your requirements; that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; that the information provided through the Service is accurate, reliable or correct; that any defects or errors will be corrected; that the Service will be available at any particular time or location; that any Contribution will be reviewed within any period, Accepted, or published; or that the Service is free of viruses or other harmful components. You assume full responsibility and risk of loss resulting from your downloading and/or use of files, information, content or other material obtained from the Service. Keep your own copy of everything you upload.

13. Limitation of liability

We will not be liable for damages or losses arising from your use or inability to use the Service or otherwise arising under this Agreement, and our total liability is capped. Please read this section carefully; it limits our obligations to you.

You understand and agree that we will not be liable to you or any third party for any loss of profits, use, goodwill, or data, or for any incidental, indirect, special, consequential or exemplary damages, however arising, that result from

• the use, disclosure, display, or publication of your Contributions;
• your use or inability to use the Service;
• any modification, fee change, suspension or discontinuance of the Service or of a Delivery;
• the Service generally or the software or systems that make the Service available;
• unauthorized access to or alterations of your transmissions or data;
• statements or conduct of any third party on the Service, including reviewers and Partners;
• any other user interactions that you input or receive through your use of the Service; or
• any other matter relating to the Service.

Our liability is limited whether or not we have been informed of the possibility of such damages, and even if a remedy set forth in this Agreement is found to have failed of its essential purpose. We will have no liability for any failure or delay due to matters beyond our reasonable control.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Blotdle's total liability to you arising out of or relating to this Agreement or the Service will not exceed the greater of the fees Blotdle paid you for Accepted Contributions in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim and five hundred United States dollars. This limit does not apply to Blotdle's obligation to pay fees earned for Accepted Contributions, or to liability for fraud or wilful misconduct, or to any liability that cannot be limited by law. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these exclusions or limitations, and in those jurisdictions Blotdle's liability is limited to the smallest amount the law permits.

14. Release and indemnification

You are responsible for your Contributions and your use of the Service. If you harm someone else or get into a dispute with someone else, we will not be involved.

If you have a dispute with one or more other experts, reviewers, or Partners, you agree to release Blotdle from any and all claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with such disputes.

You agree to indemnify us, defend us, and hold us harmless, together with our officers, directors, employees, contractors, and Partners, from and against any and all claims, liabilities, and expenses, including attorneys' fees, arising out of your Contributions, your use of the Service, your breach of any representation or obligation in this Agreement, your violation of any law or third-party right, or any claim that you are an employee of Blotdle or that Blotdle owes taxes or contributions in respect of your fees, provided that Blotdle (1) promptly gives you written notice of the claim, demand, suit or proceeding; (2) gives you sole control of the defense and settlement of the claim, demand, suit or proceeding (provided that you may not settle any claim, demand, suit or proceeding unless the settlement unconditionally releases Blotdle of all liability); and (3) provides to you all reasonable assistance, at your expense. You have no obligation for a claim to the extent it arises from Blotdle's own modification of a Contribution or from Blotdle's negligence or wilful misconduct.

15. Dispute resolution and arbitration

Talk to us first. If that fails, disputes go to individual arbitration rather than court, unless you opt out within 30 days or the law where you live says otherwise. Please read this section carefully.

Informal resolution first. Before starting arbitration or a lawsuit, the party raising a dispute will send the other a written notice describing the dispute and the relief sought, and the parties will try in good faith to resolve it, including by at least one telephone or video conference, within 60 days. Notice to Blotdle goes to the address in Section 19. Notice to you goes to the email address on the experts list. This step is a condition of starting arbitration or a lawsuit.

Arbitration. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to this Agreement, the Service, or any Contribution that is not resolved informally will be settled by binding arbitration administered by JAMS under its rules then in effect, before a single arbitrator. The arbitration will be held in the county where you live, or in San Francisco, California, or by video conference, at your election. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this Section. The arbitrator decides all questions about the scope, interpretation, and enforceability of this arbitration agreement, except that a court decides the enforceability of the class action waiver. The arbitrator's award is final and may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. Blotdle will pay all JAMS filing, administrative, and arbitrator fees beyond the amount of the filing fee you would have paid to bring the claim in court, unless the arbitrator finds the claim frivolous.

Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court. Either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in court to protect its intellectual property or Confidential Information, or to stop the disclosure of an unpublished Contribution. Nothing in this Section requires arbitration of any claim that applicable law makes non-arbitrable or non-waivable, including claims under the California Freelance Worker Protection Act and claims covered by the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act.

Class action waiver. YOU AND BLOTDLE EACH AGREE TO BRING CLAIMS ONLY IN AN INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, COLLECTIVE, OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding, except that a claim under the California Private Attorneys General Act may be arbitrated on an individual basis. If this waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim will be severed and heard in court, and the rest of this Section stays in force.

Coordinated demands. If 25 or more similar arbitration demands are filed against Blotdle by or with the help of the same or coordinated counsel within 180 days, the parties will select a group of no more than ten to proceed first, and the remaining demands are tolled and stayed until those are resolved, after which the parties will mediate the rest in good faith. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a demand, that demand will proceed in court.

Opt-out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing the address in Section 19 within 30 days after you first accept this Agreement, from the email address on the experts list, stating your name and that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect any other part of this Agreement, and Blotdle will not treat you differently for opting out.

Residents outside the United States. If you reside in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction whose law gives you a non-waivable right to bring proceedings in your local courts or under your local law, this arbitration agreement does not deprive you of that right, and the mandatory consumer or worker protection law of your country of residence applies notwithstanding Section 18.

Courts. To the extent a dispute is not subject to arbitration, you and Blotdle agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the City and County of San Francisco, California, except as the previous paragraph provides. Any claim for injunctive relief with respect to a violation of Section 7 may be brought in any jurisdiction.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may change this Agreement, but we will give you at least 30 days' notice of material changes, and changes do not reach back to tasks you already submitted.

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to amend this Agreement at any time and will update this Agreement in the event of any such amendments. We will notify you of material changes to this Agreement, such as changes to Section 5, Section 6, or Section 15, at least 30 days prior to the change taking effect by posting a notice in the Service or sending email to the address on the experts list. Your continued use of the Service after those 30 days constitutes agreement to those revisions. For any other modifications, your continued use of the Service constitutes agreement to our revisions. A change to Section 5, Section 6, or Section 15 does not apply to Contributions submitted before its effective date or to any claim that has already accrued.

We reserve the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part of it) or any Delivery with or without notice. Fees earned for Contributions Accepted before a Delivery is discontinued remain payable.

17. Communications

We communicate with you by email and through the Service.

For contractual purposes, you (1) consent to receive communications from us in an electronic form via the email address you have submitted or via the Service; and (2) agree that all Terms of Service, agreements, notices, disclosures, and other communications that we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that those communications would satisfy if they were on paper. This section does not affect your non-waivable rights.

18. General terms

California law, the usual housekeeping clauses, and the rule that the English text governs.

• Governing law. Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, including Section 15, this Agreement between you and Blotdle and any access to or use of the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.
• Non-assignability. Blotdle may assign or delegate this Agreement and the Privacy Policy, in whole or in part, to any person or entity at any time with or without your consent, including the licences in Section 5. You may not assign or delegate any rights or obligations under this Agreement or the Privacy Policy without our prior written consent, and any unauthorized assignment and delegation by you is void.
• Section headings and summaries. Throughout this Agreement, each section includes a title and a brief summary of the following terms and conditions. These section titles and brief summaries are not legally binding.
• Severability, no waiver, and survival. If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that portion of the Agreement will be construed to reflect the parties' original intent. The remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. Any failure on the part of Blotdle to enforce any provision of this Agreement will not be considered a waiver of our right to enforce such provision. Our rights under this Agreement will survive any termination of this Agreement.
• Amendments; complete agreement. This Agreement may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized representative of Blotdle, or by the posting by Blotdle of a revised version in accordance with Section 16. This Agreement, together with the Privacy Policy and the Delivery-specific fee, deadline, and task guide shown in the Service, represents the complete and exclusive statement of the agreement between you and us. This Agreement supersedes any proposal or prior agreement oral or written, and any other communications between you and Blotdle relating to the subject matter of these terms. Delivery-specific terms control only as to the scope, fee, schedule, and task guide for that Delivery, and do not modify Sections 5, 13, 14, or 15.
• Translations. This Agreement is written in English. In the event of any conflict, uncertainty, or apparent inconsistency between any translation and the English version, the English version is the controlling version.
• Export control. You will comply with all applicable export and sanctions laws in connection with the Service and your Contributions.
• No third-party beneficiaries. Except for the indemnified parties in Section 14 and the recipients licensed under Section 5, this Agreement creates no rights in anyone other than you and Blotdle.
• Notices. Blotdle may give you notice by email to the address on the experts list or by posting in the Service. Notices to Blotdle go to the address in Section 19.

19. Contact

How to reach us.

Questions, notices, disputes, and arbitration opt-outs under this Agreement go to founders@blotdle.com.