# Patlas Terms of Service

**Last updated:** September 7, 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern access to and use of Patlas (the "Service"), an AI-assisted patent search and analysis tool operated by Yodha Systems LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company ("Patlas," "we," "us"). By creating an API key, calling the Service, or paying for a subscription, you ("Customer," "you") agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction, and have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract, to use the Service.

## 1. What Patlas Is

Patlas provides tools — accessed via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — that search patent databases and use an AI model to reason over patent claims and metadata. The tools currently offered are `search_prior_art`, `get_patent_detail`, `compare_claims`, `landscape_summary`, `submit_feedback`, `start_checkout`, `regenerate_api_key`, `create_org`, `invite_org_member`, `remove_org_member`, `get_org_status`, `create_watch`, `list_watches`, `delete_watch`, and `create_scan_report`. The four core analysis tools (`search_prior_art`, `get_patent_detail`, `compare_claims`, `landscape_summary`) are also reachable via a plain REST API for approved integration partners embedding Patlas under their own brand — see [API Reference](../API-Reference.md); this integration tier is admin-assigned only and governed by these same Terms.

**This is not legal advice.** Every tool response from the Service — success or error alike, unconditionally attached in code rather than left to each tool to remember — carries the following disclaimer, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference:

> This is an informational similarity/landscape analysis generated by an AI system reasoning over patent metadata and claims text. It is not legal advice, not a patentability or infringement opinion, and not a substitute for a professional prior-art search or attorney review. A low or "none" overlap result does not mean no similar prior art or infringement risk exists — coverage is limited to the sources and jurisdictions this tool searched, which may not be exhaustive.

You should not rely on Patlas output as a substitute for advice from a licensed patent attorney, and you should not make filing, prosecution, freedom-to-operate, or litigation decisions based solely on Patlas output. **In particular, a "low" or "none" overlap result is not a freedom-to-operate clearance or an indication that no prior art exists** — it reflects only what this tool's searched sources and jurisdictions returned. Patlas is a technology provider, not your attorney: no attorney-client, fiduciary, or other professional relationship is formed by your use of the Service, and receipt of your submitted content does not create one.

## 2. Accounts and API Keys

- Access requires an API key issued by Patlas. You are responsible for keeping your API key confidential and for all activity under it.
- You must notify us promptly at support@yodhasystems.com if you believe a key has been compromised.
- We may suspend or revoke a key for violation of these Terms, non-payment, or suspected abuse.
- You use the Service at your own risk with respect to your own API key and account security. We are not responsible for loss, theft, or unauthorized use of your API key resulting from your own failure to keep it confidential, a compromise of your own device or accounts, or the actions of third parties outside our control. This does not limit any liability arising from our own fraud or willful misconduct, or that cannot be limited under applicable law (see Section 9).

## 3. Plans and Billing

- Patlas offers a Free tier, a Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) tier, and a Subscription tier. Current pricing for each tier is shown at signup/checkout.
- **Stripe's role.** Stripe is our payment processor: it holds your payment method, executes the charge, and is the system of record for the transaction itself. We never receive or store your card number (see [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md)).
- **Billing cadence.** PAYG usage is metered per tool call and reported to Stripe on an ongoing basis, billed on Stripe's standard invoicing cycle for metered usage. Subscription is billed as a recurring flat fee on a monthly cycle from the date you subscribe.
- **When metered usage is final.** A PAYG charge is based on usage already reported to Stripe at the time of billing; once reported, that usage is final for billing purposes (see Refund policy below) even if you dispute the underlying tool result's quality.
- **Failed payments.** Your account is suspended (access to paid-tier tools stops) immediately on the first payment failure Stripe notifies us of — there is no grace period on our side. Resolve the failure with Stripe (e.g. update your payment method); your next successful payment reactivates the account.
- **Cancellation.** You can stop a subscription by deleting your account (see [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md) §5), which cancels any active Stripe subscription as part of that request. Cancellation stops future billing; it is not a refund of amounts already charged (see Refund policy below).
- **Price changes.** We may change pricing for a tier going forward. A price change does not retroactively apply to a billing period already in progress; it takes effect on your next billing cycle after the change is posted here. Continuing to use a paid tier after a price change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the new price for that tier.
- **Billing disputes.** Contact support@yodhasystems.com within 60 days of a charge to dispute it. We'll investigate against our usage records (see [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md) §1); this does not extend or waive whatever dispute window your payment method/card issuer separately offers.
- **Refund policy:** All charges are non-refundable except as required by applicable law. PAYG charges reflect actual metered usage and are not refundable once reported to Stripe.
- **Patent Landscape & Prior-Art Audit report.** A separate, one-time, non-recurring flat-fee purchase (current price shown when you request one via the `create_scan_report` tool) — not metered, not a subscription. The generated document is delivered directly to your authenticated session (e.g. embedded in your AI client's response) — it is never hosted at a public web address. We keep a server-side copy for a limited time so a repeat request doesn't require paying again, after which requesting it again regenerates it at no extra charge; we do not commit to a specific retention period, since it may be adjusted based on operational need. Non-refundable once the report has been generated; contact support@yodhasystems.com before requesting generation if you no longer want to proceed.
- Free tier usage is capped (currently 2 calls/month, and separately capped at 20,000 cumulative Claude tokens/month) and does not include `compare_claims` or `landscape_summary`. Exceeding tier limits may result in errors until the next billing period or an upgrade.

## 4. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:
- Use the Service to violate any law or third party's intellectual property rights.
- Attempt to circumvent rate limits, tier restrictions, or authentication.
- Resell or sublicense access to the Service without our written consent.
- Submit content to the Service that you do not have the right to share with our third-party processors (see our [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md)).
- Reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Service, or attempt to extract its underlying prompts, models, or source code.
- Introduce viruses, malware, or other harmful code, or use bots, scrapers, or other automated means to access the Service outside of normal API use.
- Impersonate any person or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity, in connection with your use of the Service.

If you are using the Service on behalf of an employer, client, or other third party, you are responsible for determining whether you are authorized to submit their information to the Service — including material subject to attorney-client privilege, work-product protection, nondisclosure agreements, or other confidentiality obligations.

## 5. Third-Party Data Sources and Processors

The Service calls third-party APIs to fulfill requests, including Anthropic's Claude API, USPTO PatentsView, EPO/Espacenet, and Stripe. Details of what data is sent to each are in our [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md). Patent-data accuracy/availability and AI-reasoning correctness are different risk categories — Patlas is not responsible for the accuracy, availability, timeliness, or completeness of third-party patent data sources, nor for errors introduced by AI reasoning over that data.

## 6. Intellectual Property and Content License

Patent data returned by the Service originates from public patent databases (USPTO, EPO) and is not owned by Patlas. Patlas retains all rights to the Service itself — its software, tools, prompts, and output formatting/presentation. You may use the specific output generated for you, subject to these Terms and any applicable third-party rights in the underlying patent data.

You retain all rights to the invention descriptions and other content you submit to the Service ("Your Content"). You grant Patlas a limited, non-exclusive license to access, process, transmit, and store Your Content only as reasonably necessary to provide, secure, maintain, and support the Service, to comply with law, and to prevent fraud or abuse. **Patlas will not use Your Content to train general-purpose AI models, sell it, use it for advertising, disclose it to other customers, or use it for product development unrelated to fulfilling your request.** We may use aggregated or de-identified usage statistics (e.g. request volume, tool popularity, rank-level click-through) that do not identify you or reveal Your Content, to operate and improve the Service.

You represent that you have the right to submit Your Content to the Service and that doing so does not violate any third party's rights (including confidentiality obligations to inventors, employers, or clients).

## 7. Confidentiality

**"Confidential Information"** means Your Content and any other non-public information you submit to the Service. It does not include information that: (a) is or becomes publicly available through no fault of Patlas; (b) you can show was already in Patlas's possession without confidentiality obligation before you submitted it; (c) is independently developed by Patlas without reference to Your Content; or (d) is rightfully received from a third party without a duty of confidentiality.

Patlas will treat Confidential Information as confidential and will not disclose it except: (a) to the third-party processors described in our [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md) as necessary to provide the Service, (b) to our employees/contractors on a need-to-know basis for support, security, or legal-compliance purposes, (c) as required by law or valid legal process (where legally permitted, we will give you notice before complying, so you have an opportunity to object), or (d) with your consent. Aggregated or de-identified usage statistics that do not reveal Confidential Information (Section 6) are not restricted by this Section.

**Security standard.** Patlas protects Confidential Information using the technical and organizational safeguards described in [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md) §6 — no specific industry certification (e.g. SOC 2, ISO 27001) is currently held or represented.

**Duration.** This confidentiality obligation survives for as long as Patlas holds Confidential Information, and continues after termination of these Terms with respect to any Confidential Information Patlas retains under [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md) §4.

This confidentiality commitment does not create an attorney-client privilege or evidentiary protection — it is a contractual obligation, not a legal privilege, and you should not rely on it as a substitute for privilege determinations you would otherwise need to make. Enterprise/law-firm customers needing broader or differently-structured confidentiality terms (e.g. a mutual NDA, or terms matching their own confidentiality policy) should contact us to discuss a separate agreement rather than relying solely on this clickwrap clause.

## 8. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Patlas, Yodha Systems LLC, and its officers, employees, and agents from any claim, liability, damages, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from: (a) Your Content, including any claim that Your Content infringes a third party's rights or that you lacked authorization to submit it, (b) your use of the Service in violation of these Terms or applicable law, or (c) your misuse of the Service.

## 9. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT OUTPUT IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE, OR SUITABLE FOR ANY LEGAL OR BUSINESS DECISION. WE DO NOT GUARANTEE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE OPERATION OF THE SERVICE.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PATLAS AND ITS OPERATORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS OR REVENUE, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) TWENTY DOLLARS ($20.00 USD), OR (B) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM. THIS CAP DOES NOT APPLY TO YOUR INDEMNIFICATION OBLIGATIONS UNDER SECTION 8, TO EITHER PARTY'S FRAUD OR WILLFUL MISCONDUCT, OR TO LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.

Nothing in this Section 9 limits any non-waivable statutory warranty or liability right you hold under the law applicable to you (including as a consumer resident in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or elsewhere) — this Section applies only to the extent permitted by that law.

Patlas does not provide an intellectual-property indemnity for the Service; the Service is provided subject to the disclaimers above.

## 10. No Guarantee of Search Completeness

Patlas is not a complete, exhaustive index of the world's patents or prior art. Results may be incomplete or inaccurate due to factors including: unpublished patent applications, publication lag for recently filed material, limited jurisdiction/database coverage (see Section 1), outages or errors in third-party data sources, indexing or text-extraction errors in source databases, and the inherent limitations of AI-generated reasoning. Do not treat the absence of a result as evidence that no relevant prior art or patent exists.

## 11. Export Compliance

The Service may be subject to U.S. export control and economic sanctions laws. By using the Service, you represent that you are not located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any country subject to a U.S. government embargo, and that you are not listed on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

## 12. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your API key at any time. We may suspend or terminate access for breach of these Terms, non-payment, or if required by law. Sections 3 (as to amounts owed), 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, and 14 survive termination.

## 13. Governing Law, Arbitration, and Class Action Waiver

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

**Agreement to arbitrate.** Except as set out below, you and Patlas agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved exclusively through binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules (if you are using the Service for personal, non-commercial purposes) or its Commercial Arbitration Rules (if you are using the Service for a business or professional purpose), in each case as then in effect, rather than in court, before a single arbitrator. Which rule set applies is determined by the nature of your use of the Service, not by which party initiates the arbitration. Arbitration will take place in New Jersey, United States (or, at your election, by videoconference or on written submissions). Judgment on the arbitrator's award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

**Delegation.** The arbitrator, not any court, has exclusive authority to resolve any dispute about the interpretation, applicability, enforceability, or formation of this arbitration agreement, including any claim that all or part of it is void or voidable — except that a claim that the class-action/mass-arbitration waivers below are unenforceable as to a particular claim must be decided by a court, not the arbitrator, and if a court finds that waiver unenforceable as to a given claim, that claim (and only that claim) will proceed in court rather than arbitration.

**Mass arbitration.** If 25 or more similar arbitration demands against Patlas are filed by or with the coordination of the same law firm or organization within a short period, the parties agree the AAA's mass-arbitration or batch-arbitration procedures (or, if none apply, a reasonable batching process the parties or the AAA agree to) will be used to resolve them efficiently, rather than administering each individually with separate filing fees where doing so would be impractical. This does not waive the individual-arbitration/class-waiver requirement below — it addresses only the logistics of resolving many individual claims.

**Class action and jury trial waiver.** You and Patlas each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class action, class arbitration, or other representative proceeding. Claims may be brought only on an individual basis. If this specific waiver is found unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim must be litigated in court rather than arbitrated, and the rest of this Section 13 remains in effect for all other claims.

**Fees.** Arbitration fees and costs are allocated per the applicable AAA rules identified above (which, for consumer arbitrations under the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules, cap the consumer's share of fees and shift most administrative costs to the business) — we do not modify or reduce whatever fee allocation those rules already provide.

**Exceptions.** Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in court to prevent or stop unauthorized use or abuse of the Service or infringement of intellectual property rights.

**30-day opt-out.** You may opt out of this arbitration agreement (but not the rest of these Terms) by emailing support@yodhasystems.com within 30 days of first agreeing to these Terms, stating your name and that you opt out of arbitration. If you opt out, disputes will instead be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in New Jersey, and you consent to personal jurisdiction there.

**Consumer carve-out.** Nothing in this Section overrides a non-waivable right you hold to bring a claim before courts in your own jurisdiction of residence under applicable consumer-protection law (including as a consumer resident in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or elsewhere).

## 14. Miscellaneous

- **Severability.** If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full effect.
- **No waiver.** Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.
- **Assignment.** You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
- **Entire agreement.** These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Patlas regarding the Service, superseding any prior agreements.
- **Service changes.** We may add, change, or discontinue features of the Service at any time. We will provide reasonable advance notice before discontinuing a paid tool you actively use, except where not practicable (e.g. a security issue or a change forced by a third-party processor).
- **Force majeure.** Neither party is liable for delay or failure to perform due to causes beyond its reasonable control, including outages or failures of a third-party processor we depend on (Anthropic, Stripe, Cloudflare, USPTO, EPO), internet or power infrastructure failures, natural disasters, war, terrorism, civil unrest, pandemic, or government action. No Service Level Agreement or uptime guarantee is offered.

## 15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Non-material changes are effective upon posting, reflected by an updated "Last updated" date.

**Material changes** — including changes that narrow your rights or expand how we use Your Content — take effect no sooner than 14 days after posting, dated by the updated "Last updated" date. We do not currently collect an email address for most accounts (see [Privacy Policy](./privacy-policy.md) — this is a deliberate data-minimization choice), so **we do not have a way to email you notice of a change directly**: checking this page for the current "Last updated" date is, today, the actual mechanism by which you learn of one, not a formality layered on top of a separate notice we send you. If that changes (e.g. we build a way to notify you in-product or add an optional contact channel), we'll update this Section to reflect the real mechanism rather than continue describing one that doesn't exist. Where applicable law requires a stronger notice or consent mechanism than what's described here for a specific change, we will provide it for that change specifically.

Continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of it.

## 16. Contact

Questions about these Terms: support@yodhasystems.com.