Terms and Conditions of Use

1. Legal Entity and Scope of Service

These Terms and Conditions of Use (the "Terms") govern access to and use of the BioSkepsis biomedical literature software-as-a-service platform, available at bioskepsis.ai and app.bioskepsis.ai, together with all associated interfaces — including subdomains, APIs, SDKs, plug-ins, and any related mobile or desktop applications (collectively, the "Service" or "BioSkepsis").

The Service is owned and operated by EFEVRE TECH LTD, a limited liability company incorporated in the Republic of Cyprus (Cyprus company registration no. HE 384880, registered office at 104 Kykliki Leoforos Street, 6056 Larnaca, Cyprus) (the "Company," "we," "us," or "our").

1.1 Definitions

• "BioSkepsis" and "Service" mean the platform described above.
• "Website" means the domain bioskepsis.ai and all associated subdomains.
• "Applications" means any downloadable or web-based applications providing access to the Service.
• "Interfaces" means any APIs, SDKs, or plug-ins provided by the Company for accessing or integrating with the Service.
• "User," "you," or "your" means the natural or legal person accessing or using the Service.
• "Commercial Data Products" means the data products described in §8.5 (anonymised and aggregated data) and §8.8 (identified professional profiles) that the Company licenses or sells to Recipients.
• "Recipient" means a pharmaceutical, biotechnology, diagnostics, genomics, life-science technology, or research organisation, or an agent acting on its behalf, that receives a Commercial Data Product from the Company under a written agreement.
• "Anonymised and aggregated data" means data derived from use of the Service that has been irreversibly anonymised and aggregated so that no individual is reasonably identifiable by any means reasonably likely to be used, whether alone or in combination with other data available to the Recipient. Such data is not personal data.
• "Opt-out preference signal" means a browser or device setting, including Global Privacy Control (GPC), by which you communicate a choice to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information, and which we honour where applicable law requires.

1.2 Acceptance

By accessing or using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to be legally bound by these Terms, together with all applicable laws and regulations of the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union — including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Directive 2001/29/EC, Directive (EU) 2019/790, the Digital Services Act (EU) 2022/2065, and the AI Act (EU) 2024/1689 to the extent applicable.

Nothing in these Terms or in the use of the Service constitutes legal, medical, regulatory, or scientific advice, or creates any legal, professional, or fiduciary relationship between you and EFEVRE TECH LTD.

1.3 Eligibility and Accounts

To use the Service you must be at least 18 years old and have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract. You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete information during registration and to keep it up to date.

• You are responsible for all activity under your account. Keep credentials confidential and notify us promptly of any suspected unauthorised use or security incident.
• We may suspend or disable access if we reasonably believe your account is compromised, used in violation of these Terms, or poses a legal or security risk.

2. Purpose of the Service and Limitation of Responsibility

BioSkepsis is an AI-assisted research tool designed to help users explore and interpret biomedical and life-science literature. The Service generates automated outputs that may contain inaccuracies, omissions, or interpretative inconsistencies.

Subject to §13 (which preserves your statutory consumer rights), EFEVRE TECH LTD is not responsible for any use, misuse, reliance, dissemination, or publication of information produced through BioSkepsis. You are solely responsible for:

1. ensuring the lawfulness of any information you generate, process, upload, or share through the Service; and
2. independently verifying the accuracy and reliability of all outputs before applying, disseminating, or publishing them.

The Company does not control or verify (i) the legality of user inputs; (ii) the licensing status of third-party content processed (including material owned by Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, IEEE, or other publishers); or (iii) your subsequent use or disclosure of outputs. The Company has no general obligation to monitor, but will comply with applicable EU law and any valid, duly issued legal order.

3. User Warranties and Compliance with Third-Party Rights

You expressly warrant and undertake that:

• License compliance. All materials you upload or process are lawfully obtained and used under the necessary rights, licences, or consents — including under EU text-and-data-mining exceptions where applicable.
• Publisher restrictions. You will comply with restrictions imposed by third-party rights-holders or publishers (e.g., Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, IEEE).
• Lawfulness of content. Inputs and outputs do not infringe any intellectual-property, database, privacy, contractual, or other proprietary right, and do not violate any law or court order.
• Verification of outputs. You will independently review all results before reliance or external communication.
• Indemnity. Subject to §13, you will indemnify the Company against claims arising from breach of the above.

4. Notice-and-Action Procedure (Digital Services Act)

In accordance with Article 16 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (Digital Services Act), we maintain a notice-and-action mechanism. To submit a notice regarding allegedly illegal content or activity on the Service, email [email protected] with: (a) a sufficiently detailed explanation of the alleged illegality; (b) the precise URL or location of the content; (c) your name and contact details (except where the notice concerns offences under Articles 3–7 of Directive 2011/93/EU); and (d) a statement of good faith. We will acknowledge receipt and assess the notice in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary, and objective manner. We do not proactively monitor user content.

5. AI Outputs and Professional Disclaimer

The Service uses third-party large language models, including Google Gemini via Vertex AI, to generate outputs. You acknowledge that:

• outputs may be incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate (commonly described as "hallucinations");
• the Service is provided "as is" and "as available," subject to your statutory consumer rights;
• you must independently verify all outputs before reliance;
• the Service does not constitute medical, clinical, legal, regulatory, or financial advice and must not be used as the sole basis for decisions in those domains.

6. Prohibited Conduct

You shall not:

• process or reproduce content in breach of applicable licence terms;
• circumvent access controls, paywalls, or technical protection measures;
• use the Service for any unlawful, defamatory, or misleading purpose;
• use outputs for clinical, regulatory, or legal decision-making without independent professional verification;
• use outputs or the Service to train external machine-learning models contrary to third-party rights or these Terms;
• scrape, mass-download, or reverse-engineer the Service or its underlying APIs other than as expressly permitted;
• upload malicious code or otherwise interfere with the integrity or availability of the Service.

7. Intellectual Property and Feedback

All intellectual-property rights in BioSkepsis — including its software, algorithms, data schemas, interface design, documentation, and derivative works — remain the exclusive property of EFEVRE TECH LTD or its licensors. Early adopters, testers, free-tier users, and collaborators acquire no ownership or derivative rights in the Service.

By submitting ideas, feedback, or suggestions to us, you grant the Company a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use them without obligation of attribution or compensation. You retain ownership of content you upload and of your queries. Use of outputs is at your own risk and confers no rights beyond those lawfully held in the original input materials.

Sections 8.5 and 8.8 are the sole bases on which data derived from your queries may be commercialised. Nothing in this §7 grants the Company any broader right to do so, and your ownership of your queries is not affected by either section.

8. Data Protection

Personal data is processed in accordance with the GDPR and our Privacy Notice, which forms part of these Terms.

For all personal data processed through the Service, EFEVRE TECH LTD acts as data controller within the meaning of Article 4(7) GDPR. Where we provide the Service to an enterprise or institutional customer that uploads personal data of its own data subjects under a separate written Data Processing Agreement, we act as data processor on that customer's behalf solely under its documented instructions and the terms of that DPA.

You warrant that any personal data you submit has a lawful basis under the GDPR and that, where you are acting as a controller in your own right, you have provided the necessary notices to the relevant data subjects.

8.1 Data Subject Rights

Pursuant to Articles 15–22 GDPR, users have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, data portability, and the right to withdraw consent. Requests are handled within one (1) month of identity verification, extendable by up to two (2) months for complex cases under Article 12(3) GDPR. Send requests to [email protected].

8.2 Search History — Purpose Limitation

8.2.1 Baseline. Except (a) as irreversibly anonymised and aggregated data under §8.5, and (b) where you have given the specific opt-in consent described in §8.8 (Commercial Data Products), we do not sell, share, license, or otherwise disclose your identifiable search history (queries, prompts, uploaded documents, session data) to third parties for advertising, cross-context behavioural advertising, profiling, or model-training purposes. Absent (a) or (b), identifiable history is processed solely to provide and secure the Service, to honour your account, and to comply with legal obligations.

8.2.2 You may delete individual items or your full search history at any time. Deletion, and any withdrawal of consent, removes your data from all future disclosures and Commercial Data Products, but cannot retrieve or recall data already disclosed to a Recipient before the deletion or withdrawal took effect.

8.3 Model Training and Secondary Use of User Data

8.3.1 We do not use your prompts, uploaded documents, AI outputs, or any other user-provided content to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any machine-learning model.

8.3.2 We do not sell, disclose, or transfer identifiable user data for analytics, advertising, or AI-model development, except: (a) as irreversibly anonymised and aggregated data under §8.5; or (b) with your specific, freely given, and informed opt-in consent under §8.8.

8.4 Deletion of Data

Following a verified deletion request, we erase user accounts and search histories from active systems within thirty (30) days and from backups within ninety (90) days, except where retention is required by law (e.g., Cyprus tax and accounting obligations). After the retention period, no data capable of identifying you is retained.

8.5 Anonymised and Aggregated Statistical Data

8.5.1 We may process, license, sell, and disclose anonymised, aggregated statistical data derived from use of the Service to improve the Service, for internal analytics, and as commercial data products for our own and any third parties' purposes. Such data includes usage statistics (e.g., feature utilisation rates, latency distributions), thematic research-interest trends, topic- and entity-frequency indicators, methodology and assay interest, biomarker and target signals, and therapeutic-area demand signals.

8.5.2 Recipients may include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, diagnostics, genomics, life-science technology, and research organisations and their agents. Because such data is not personal data (see §8.5.3), no consent under §8.8 is required and the identity or sector of the Recipient does not affect its lawful disclosure.

8.5.3 Anonymisation standard. Such data is irreversibly anonymised so that no individual is reasonably identifiable by any means reasonably likely to be used, whether alone or in combination with other data available to the Recipient. Data meeting this test is anonymous information, is not personal data under the GDPR, UK GDPR, or applicable US state law, and falls outside the consent, sale, and opt-out requirements applicable to personal data.

8.5.4 Re-identification testing. Before releasing any dataset we assess re-identification risk, including risk arising from small cohorts, rare or unique query combinations, and free-text that could reveal an individual, and we suppress, generalise, or aggregate further (e.g., minimum-cohort thresholds) where any residual risk exists. We do not disclose raw prompts, queries, or documents; only derived, aggregated indicators.

8.5.5 Lawful basis for anonymisation; contractual safeguards. The act of anonymising personal data is carried out under our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). Every disclosure is made under a written agreement that prohibits re-identification and any attempt to re-identify, and restricts onward use to the agreed purpose.

8.5.6 Exclusion of sensitive data. We take measures to ensure aggregated outputs do not reveal special-category or sensitive data about any individual (e.g., a user researching their own health condition).

8.5.7 Where analytics rely on cookies or device storage, consent is collected as required under the ePrivacy Directive and the GDPR.

8.6 Lawful Bases and Retention

Processing is based on contractual necessity (Art. 6(1)(b)), legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) for security and service improvement, legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) for tax and accounting records, and consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) for analytics and ad-measurement cookies. Default retention periods are set out in our Privacy Notice.

8.7 Promotional and Marketing Communications

With your explicit, freely given consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), we may send you promotional and marketing emails about BioSkepsis features, biomedical research updates, product announcements, offers, and related content from EFEVRE TECH LTD.

• Opt-in. You may give consent to receive promotional emails by ticking the relevant checkbox during account registration, by enabling marketing communications in your account settings, or by subscribing via any designated sign-up form on the Website.
• Opt-out. You may withdraw your consent at any time and without giving any reason — at no cost and with no effect on your access to the Service — by (i) clicking the "Unsubscribe" link included in every marketing email, (ii) adjusting your notification preferences in your account settings, or (iii) sending a request to [email protected]. We will action opt-out requests promptly and within no more than ten (10) business days.
• Effect of withdrawal. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out on the basis of consent before its withdrawal. We will continue to send you transactional and service-related emails (such as account confirmations, security notices, and subscription receipts) regardless of your marketing preferences, as these are sent on the basis of contractual necessity (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• No sharing for marketing. Except where you have given specific opt-in consent under §8.8 (Commercial Data Products), we do not sell, rent, or share your email address or any other personal data with third parties for their own marketing or advertising purposes. For clarity, engagement by a pharmaceutical or life-science organisation under §8.8 is professional and scientific engagement, not third-party marketing, and occurs only with your consent.

8.8 Commercial Data Products (KOL Directory and Insight Licensing)

8.8.1 Nature. With your prior, specific, freely given, informed and unambiguous opt-in consent, we may include your professional profile, namely your name, professional email, institutional affiliation, and research-interest indicators derived from your use of the Service, in directories or datasets that we license or sell to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and life-science organisations and their agents ("Recipients") for professional-engagement purposes, including identification of subject-matter experts, advisory, research collaboration, and scientific exchange ("Commercial Data Products").

8.8.2 Consent is optional and unbundled. Your consent under this section is optional. Access to, and the price and functionality of, the Service do not depend on whether you grant it, and it is requested separately from your acceptance of these Terms (GDPR Art. 7(4)). You may grant or refuse it at registration or at any time in your account settings, with equal prominence given to "yes" and "no".

8.8.3 Independent controllers. Each Recipient acts as an independent data controller for its own use of data disclosed under this section. We disclose data only under a written agreement requiring the Recipient to comply with applicable data-protection law, to provide the transparency information required of it, to honour data-subject and consumer rights, and to refrain from re-identification (of anonymised data) and from unauthorised onward sale.

8.8.4 Withdrawal and its effect. You may withdraw this consent, or object to this processing, at any time and without detriment, via your account settings or by emailing [email protected]. Withdrawal takes effect promptly and removes you from all future Commercial Data Products. It does not, and cannot, retrieve data already disclosed to a Recipient before withdrawal; we will, however, notify Recipients of your withdrawal and require them to cease further processing where the law requires.

8.8.5 Recipients and purposes. The categories of Recipients, the categories of data disclosed, the purposes, and the retention periods are described and kept current in our Privacy Notice.

8.8.6 Special-category and sensitive data. We do not knowingly include in any Commercial Data Product data that reveals your own health condition or other special-category data (GDPR Art. 9) or "sensitive personal information" under US law. Where such data is detected in free-text it is excluded before disclosure.

8.8.7 United States: Notice of Sale/Share and Opt-Out. For the purposes of US state privacy laws, our disclosure of personal information under this section may be a "sale" or "share." You may opt out at any time through the "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link on the Website, and we honour recognised opt-out preference signals, including Global Privacy Control (GPC). We do not sell or share the personal information of a consumer we know to be under 16 without opt-in consent, and we provide the right to limit use of sensitive personal information where applicable.

9. Cookies and Analytics

Strictly necessary cookies are used to operate the Service (authentication, security, load balancing). Non-essential cookies — including Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads conversion measurement — are used only with your prior consent, which you may withdraw at any time via the cookie banner or the Cookie Policy page. We do not use behavioural advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

10. Security

We implement technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk — including encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access controls, audit logging, and regular vulnerability assessments. No system can be guaranteed entirely secure. You remain responsible for the confidentiality of your credentials and for the devices used to access the Service.

11. Third-Party AI Providers

The Service uses Google Gemini via Vertex AI as its primary large language model provider. Per Google's published Vertex AI Data Governance documentation, Vertex AI does not use customer prompts or responses to train Google's foundation models without explicit permission. Such providers act as sub-processors under the GDPR and are bound by appropriate contractual safeguards (see the sub-processor list in our Privacy Notice). The Company may change AI providers at its discretion for reliability, performance, or compliance reasons; material changes affecting personal data will be reflected in the Privacy Notice.

12. Indemnification

Subject to §13 (which preserves your statutory consumer rights), you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless EFEVRE TECH LTD, its directors, officers, employees, and affiliates from and against any third-party claim, liability, damage, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of: (i) your content or inputs; (ii) reliance on outputs; (iii) breach of these Terms; (iv) violation of third-party rights or licence terms; or (v) failure to verify outputs before use. This indemnity does not apply to claims caused by our wilful misconduct, gross negligence, or breach of these Terms by us, and does not apply to consumers to the extent indemnification by a consumer is restricted by Cyprus or EU law.

13. Limitation of Liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for: (a) death or personal injury caused by our negligence; (b) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; (c) gross negligence or wilful misconduct; (d) any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under Cyprus or EU law, including statutory rights of consumers under Directive (EU) 2019/770 on contracts for the supply of digital content and digital services and the Cyprus implementing legislation; or (e) liability arising under Articles 82 GDPR (right to compensation).

Subject to the foregoing, to the maximum extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, including loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or business opportunity, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.
• For paying users, our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Service in any twelve (12) month period shall not exceed the total fees you paid to us for the Service in that twelve-month period, and in no event more than EUR 500.
• For free-tier users, our total aggregate liability shall not exceed EUR 100, except where a higher amount is required by mandatory law.
• We are not liable for failures resulting from third-party providers, force-majeure events, or circumstances beyond our reasonable control.

14. Publisher-Licence Enforcement

We bear no general obligation to monitor or enforce compliance with publisher or other third-party licences. We may suspend access if, in our reasonable judgement, continued use poses a legal or reputational risk.

15. Suspension and Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access immediately, with or without notice, in the event of a material breach of these Terms, violation of law, or risk of legal exposure for the Company. Where reasonably possible, we will provide prior notice and an opportunity to cure. You remain responsible for activity conducted before suspension or termination. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including §§7, 8 (including §8.8), 12, 13, and 24) will survive.

16. Modifications and Service Availability

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature of the Service at any time. Unless expressly agreed in writing, no uptime guarantee or service-level commitment is provided beyond your statutory rights as a consumer.

17. Fees, Payments, Taxes, and Refunds

Paid features are billed through Stripe, subject to Stripe's terms. Prices are exclusive of taxes and regulatory fees, which may be added as required by law. Unless otherwise stated, subscriptions renew automatically for successive billing periods until cancelled.

• You authorise us and our payment processor to charge the applicable fees to your selected payment method. Failed or expired payment methods may result in suspension or downgrade of access.
• Cancellation takes effect at the end of the then-current billing term. Except where required by law, fees already paid are non-refundable, and partial periods are not prorated.
• EU consumer right of withdrawal. If you are a consumer resident in the EU, you have a 14-day right of withdrawal under Directive 2011/83/EU from the date of conclusion of the contract. By starting to use the Service during this period, you expressly request immediate performance and acknowledge that, once the Service is fully performed, the right of withdrawal is lost. Where the Service is partially performed, you owe a proportionate amount.
• If we discontinue the Service or terminate your access without cause (i.e., not due to your breach), we may — at our sole discretion and without obligation — offer a credit or a partial refund of prepaid fees for the unused portion of the current term. Nothing in this paragraph limits any non-waivable statutory right you may have as a consumer under EU or Cyprus law.

18. Third-Party Services and Accounts

The Service integrates with third-party providers (for example, Clerk for authentication, Stripe for payments, and Google Cloud / Vertex AI for AI inference). Your use of such third-party services is subject to their own terms and policies. We are not responsible for third-party sites, services, or their performance.

19. Third-Party Links

Links to third-party websites or resources are provided for convenience and do not imply endorsement. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, policies, or practices of any third parties.

20. Semantic Scholar API and S2 Data

The Service integrates with the Semantic Scholar API provided by The Allen Institute for AI (AI2). Your use of data obtained via the API ("S2 Data") must comply with AI2's Terms and Conditions of Use, the Semantic Scholar API License Agreement, applicable S2 Data licences (e.g., CC BY-NC, ODC-BY), and any licences governing third-party content included in S2 Data.

• Attribution. Where we display contributions from S2 Data, we attribute "Semantic Scholar." For scientific publications you generate using S2 outputs, you must cite the Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform as required by AI2.
• Rate limits and acceptable use. You agree not to exceed or circumvent API rate limits. Abuse may result in throttling or suspension by AI2.
• Licence compliance. You are responsible for ensuring your downstream use of S2 Data complies with the applicable S2 Data licences and any third-party-content terms.

21. NCBI E-utilities and PubMed Content

Where the Service references PubMed resources or uses NCBI E-utilities, the NCBI Disclaimer and Copyright notice (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/disclaimer.html) applies. Abstracts and other materials may be protected by copyright; reproduction or redistribution beyond fair use may require permission from the copyright holder. For large-scale data mining of PubMed, consult the official guidance and database downloads provided by NLM (www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/download/pubmed_medline.html).

22. Lawful Access and Use of Third-Party Publications

The Service's linking feature directs your request to third-party link resolvers, including LibKey (a link-resolution service provided by Third Iron), which identify an access route available to your institution or an open-access copy where one exists. The Service provides links only. It does not host, reproduce, cache, supply, or otherwise provide access to publisher content.

By attaching, uploading, or otherwise submitting any publication, file, or extract, you represent and warrant that you hold lawful access to that material and that your access, retrieval, storage, and use of it complies in full with all applicable laws and regulations, including copyright and database rights, and with the licence, subscription, and terms of use imposed by the rights holder, the publisher, and your institution.

EFEVRE TECH LTD does not consent to, authorise, endorse, or facilitate the retrieval, upload, reproduction, or use of any proprietary or copyrighted material obtained unlawfully, in circumvention of technical or contractual access controls, in breach of any licence or subscription term, or from any unauthorised or infringing source. Any such act is outside the scope of the permitted use of the Service and is undertaken solely at your own risk and on your own responsibility.

Subject to §13, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless EFEVRE TECH LTD against any claim, demand, loss, liability, or expense arising from your breach of this section. EFEVRE TECH LTD reserves the right to remove any material and to suspend or terminate access where a breach is reasonably suspected.

23. Export Controls and Sanctions

You represent that you are not subject to EU, UK, or US sanctions and that you will not use the Service in violation of export-control or sanctions legislation.

24. Amendments

We may amend these Terms from time to time to reflect legal, technical, or operational developments. The "Last Updated" date at the top will reflect the most recent revision. Material changes will be communicated via the Website, the Service interface, or by email where appropriate. Continued use following publication of amendments constitutes acceptance.

25. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Cyprus and applicable European Union law. Any dispute falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the District Court of Nicosia, without prejudice to mandatory consumer-protection venue rights under EU legislation — in particular, the right of EU consumers to bring proceedings before the courts of their place of residence under Regulation (EU) 1215/2012 (Brussels Ia).

EU consumers may also use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform: ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

26. Severability and Waiver

If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect, and the invalid provision will be replaced by an enforceable provision that most closely reflects the original intent. The failure of the Company to enforce any right or provision does not constitute a waiver.

27. Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Notice and the Cookie Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and EFEVRE TECH LTD concerning the use of BioSkepsis and supersede all prior agreements or understandings on the subject.

28. Acceptance

By selecting "Accept," creating an account, or accessing the Service via bioskepsis.ai or any affiliated Interface, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to be legally bound by these Terms in their entirety.