SPOTTED Terms of Service

Agreement to These Terms

The SPOTTED Brand Trust System ("SPOTTED") is operated by Spotted Pony PR, LLC (“Spotted Pony PR” or “we” or “us”). These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of SPOTTED. By creating an account or using the service, you (a) acknowledge that you have read and understand these Terms; (b) represent and warrant that you are 18 years of age or older; and (c) accept these Terms and agree that you are legally bound by these Terms. If you don't agree, don't use the service.

The Service

SPOTTED is a brand-trust diagnostic platform. It researches publicly available information about an organization using AI, and a person reviews and rules on every score before a result exists. It produces scores, findings, and recommendations, including Scorecards, Blueprints, Progress Reports, remediation checklists, and related deliverables, about an organization's brand trust and congruence. On a subscription, the person who rules on the scores is you or someone on your account. SPOTTED does not review or approve your scores for you.

The Guided Diagnostic, in which Spotted Pony PR runs the diagnostic and rules on the scores, is a separate engagement offered by Spotted Pony PR pursuant to an order form and agreement and is not governed by these terms.

At your direction, a diagnostic can also research and score competitor organizations you select, and produce comparisons between your organization and those competitors. Competitor research reads the same publicly available information and is subject to the same human review. The Brand Trust Assessment and the SPOTTED Trainer on our public pages are available without an account and are covered by these terms where you use them.

Accounts, Roles & Invite Links

You are responsible for the accuracy of your account information, the security of your credentials, and the actions taken under your account. Account administrators can invite additional users by sharing invite links; an invite link grants access to your account's data at the role it carries, so treat invite links like credentials and share them only with people you intend to have that access. Administrators can change teammate roles and remove users at any time.

Acceptable Use

You agree to use SPOTTED solely for its intended purpose and in compliance with these Terms. Your access to SPOTTED is licensed on a subscription basis. You will not use SPOTTED in any way that could disrupt or interfere with the operation of SPOTTED for other users, gain unauthorized access to other users' accounts or data, introduce viruses, malware, or other harmful code into SPOTTED, damage or destroy the infrastructure of SPOTTED, or attempt to bypass any security measures implemented by Spotted Pony PR. Don't misuse the service. That includes attempting to access another account's data; probing, scraping, or reverse-engineering the platform; reselling or sublicensing access without a written agreement; using the service to harass or defame; or using it in violation of applicable law. We may suspend or terminate accounts engaged in misuse.

Ownership

SPOTTED is proprietary to Spotted Pony PR and is protected by intellectual property rights, including but not limited to copyright. SPOTTED, and all derivatives, shall be and remain the property of Spotted Pony PR or any of our third party licensors, suppliers or services providers (our "Third-Party Providers") which have granted Spotted Pony PR the right to license SPOTTED, as well as our data host providers and third party data providers. You shall have no rights or interests in SPOTTED except as set forth in these Terms. You acknowledge and agree that Spotted Pony PR (and none of our Third Party Providers) shall be solely responsible to investigate, defend, settle and discharge any third party claims that SPOTTED infringes any United States patent right, copyright, trade secret or other intellectual property right of such third party. You agree to notify us immediately in writing of any third party claim made regarding SPOTTED and to cooperate as reasonably necessary, at our expense, in the defense and settlement of such claim. You agree that you shall not remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary rights notices (including copyright and trademark notices) which may be affixed to or contained within SPOTTED.

Your Content & Deliverables

The information you provide to SPOTTED remains yours. The deliverables generated for your organization, from Scorecards and Blueprints to reports and scores, are yours to use for your organization's own purposes, including sharing them internally and with your advisors. You agree not to repackage deliverables or the methodology itself as a competing product or service. Where you have asked SPOTTED to research competitor organizations, a deliverable may contain findings and scores about organizations other than your own, produced from public information by the same instrument and reviewed the same way.

The SPOTTED Framework

The SPOTTED methodology is the intellectual property of Spotted Pony PR. That includes the seven dimensions, the scoring system, the trust bands, the Redline Rule, and the associated names and materials. Your use of the service is a license to benefit from that framework, not a transfer of ownership in it.

AI-Assisted Analysis & Human Review

SPOTTED uses AI to research publicly available information, and a person rules on every score before it is final. That person is whoever runs the diagnostic. On a subscription, that is you or someone on your account. Every human change to a proposed score is recorded with a written reason and kept alongside the AI's original proposal. Even so, diagnostics are advisory in nature. They are not legal, financial, accounting, or other regulated professional advice, and no score, report, or recommendation is a guarantee of any business outcome. AI research can also reflect gaps or inaccuracies in public information; the human-review step exists to reduce that risk, not to eliminate it. Findings are labeled for how they are known. A finding may be found directly in a page the research retrieved, inferred from what it retrieved, or searched for and not found. A finding that cites a source is checked against the pages the research actually retrieved before it is saved. These labels are there so you can judge the evidence rather than take the analysis on trust; they do not warrant that any finding is correct.

Fees & Billing

SPOTTED is sold as a subscription. The published prices on the pricing page are the prices. Every tier is listed there, billed monthly or annually, and the annual price is ten times the monthly price, two months free. Payment is processed by Stripe on Stripe-hosted pages; your card details never touch SPOTTED's servers. Subscriptions renew automatically until canceled. Prices are exclusive of any applicable sales tax, which is calculated and collected at checkout where the law requires it. Caps reset monthly and do not roll over. Each tier's monthly allowances, meaning diagnostic run cycles, seats, and the working-tool caps listed on the pricing page, reset at the start of each month; unused allowance does not accumulate. A diagnostic run cycle means one full diagnostic plus its follow-up diagnostic; the follow-up never counts against your allowance. At your cap, you can add one full cycle for $29, available to active subscribers. Your rate holds for twelve months. If we raise prices, your existing subscription keeps its current rate for twelve months from the date of the increase. The Founders' rate, 30% off any tier and held by the first fifty accounts, is permanent so long as the account stays continuously subscribed, and it is printed on every invoice.

Canceling

You can cancel any time from the billing page; access continues to the end of the period you've paid for, and your results remain viewable in your account after that. Partial periods are not refunded. The Guided Diagnostic is a separate consulting engagement invoiced by Spotted Pony PR, not billed through the service.

Privacy & Data

How we handle your data, including AI-provider retention, account isolation, and deletion, is described in the Privacy & Data Commitment, which is part of these terms.

Termination & Deletion

You can stop using SPOTTED at any time, and an account administrator can delete the account from the Account page. Deletion is immediate and permanent for the live platform, subject to the backup-retention window described in the privacy policy. We may suspend or terminate accounts for violating these terms or any other reason.

Disclaimers & Limitation of Liability

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Spotted Pony PR and its officers, directors, employees, agents, licensors, and suppliers from any liability, loss, claim, action, demand, and expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) resulting from, or alleged to result from, your violation of these Terms.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms at any time. The "Last updated" date above always reflects the current version, and material changes will be communicated to account administrators before they take effect.

Governing Law

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Minnesota, without regard to its conflict of law principles.

Dispute Resolution

Any controversy or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms will be settled by arbitration in Minnesota, at a time and location designated by the arbitrator. Arbitration will be conducted by the American Arbitration Association in accordance with its Rules of Commercial Arbitration, and judgment upon the award rendered by a single arbitrator may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof. Nothing herein contained will bar either party from seeking equitable remedies or any claims related to intellectual property infringement in a court of appropriate jurisdiction sitting in Minnesota. The party successfully enforcing these Terms under arbitration or court action may be awarded costs and expenses of the arbitration or other action, including reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.