Terms of Service

1. Parties, definitions and application

1.1 PipeNode is operated by Brian N. Millar, an individual resident in Ireland (“the Provider”, “we”, “us” or “our”), or, following any transfer under section 13, the transferee of the agreement.

1.1.1 The Provider is a natural person. PipeNode is not incorporated, is not carried on as a trade or business, and is operated by the Provider otherwise than in the course of a business. No company, partnership or other legal person is party to this agreement on the Provider's side, and references in this agreement to the Provider are references to that individual.

1.2 “The User”, “you” or “your” means the natural or legal person accessing or using the Service. “The Service” means the PipeNode website, workflow editor and associated software and facilities made available by the Provider. “Workflow” means a configuration of nodes, connections and settings created by the User within the Service. “Consumer” has the meaning given in section 11.

1.3 The Provider may be contacted at legal@pipenode.app in respect of any matter arising under this agreement, including the making of a complaint.

1.4 This agreement takes effect upon the earlier of the creation of an account or any use of the Service, and continues until terminated in accordance with section 9. A person who does not accept these terms must not create an account or use the Service.

1.5 Where the User accepts these terms on behalf of a company or other legal person, the User warrants that it has authority to bind that person, and “the User” shall be construed as referring to that person.

2. Nature of the Service

2.1 The Service comprises a website incorporating a visual workflow editor by which the User may connect nodes, each performing a discrete operation upon data, into a Workflow which is then executed.

2.2 Execution occurs on the User's device. Nodes are executed within the User's browser. Files supplied to a Workflow are opened by the browser from local storage and the contents of such files are not transmitted to the Provider or to any third party. Output is returned to the User by download or, where the User's browser supports the relevant facility and the User grants the necessary permission, by modification or renaming of a file in place on the User's own storage.

2.3 The Provider stores the configuration of the Workflow: which nodes the User placed, how they are connected, where they sit on the canvas, and their settings. A setting forms part of that configuration whether it is a choice among options the node itself declares or a value the User writes in its own words, as to which see clause 2.5.

2.4 The material upon which a Workflow operates is not stored. Text and tabular data supplied to a node as the material to be processed, the contents of files, the names of files supplied to a Workflow and the folders they came from, the name of any node the User has renamed, and the output of any run are all retained in the User's browser and are not transmitted to the Provider. A Workflow reopened in a later session therefore returns configured but without the material it is to operate upon, which the User must supply again.

2.5 A setting which configures a node is stored, including where the User writes it in its own words. Certain nodes take their instructions as text written by the User rather than as a choice among declared options. A find-and-replace transformation is configured by the string which is to be found and the string which is to replace it; other nodes are configured in the same manner by a pattern, an expression, a separator, a delimiter, a template, a formula or a form of words. Each such value is a setting and not material. It is part of the configuration of the Workflow, without which a saved Workflow could not be reopened in a working state, and it is accordingly stored by the Provider with the remainder of that configuration, is comprised in the licence granted by clause 5.2, and is treated as a stored Workflow throughout this agreement and the Privacy Policy.

2.5.1 The User should not write into such a setting anything which it requires the Provider not to hold. The distinction drawn by clause 2.5 is between the instruction given to a node and the material upon which the node acts. It is not a distinction between what is sensitive and what is not, and the value of such a setting is stored irrespective of what the User has chosen to write there. Where the User requires that a particular value not be stored, it should be supplied to the Workflow as material at the time of the run and not saved into a setting, or the Workflow should be kept as a scratch Workflow, which is not stored by the Provider at all.

2.6 This section is descriptive of the operation of the Service and constitutes neither a warranty nor a guarantee of security. The Privacy Policy governs the data held by the Provider, the periods of retention and the measures applied to it.

3. Beta status and charges

3.1 The Service is early-access software. It contains defects, both known and unknown. Functionality may be altered or withdrawn, and the format in which Workflows are stored may be altered such that a Workflow saved under an earlier version cannot be opened under a later one. The Provider shall take reasonable steps to avoid such an outcome and shall give notice where it is unavoidable.

3.2 No charge is payable for the Service during the beta period. Paid plans described on the Provider's website are not in operation, and the Provider is not presently able to accept payment.

3.3 The Provider shall give the User not less than 30 days' notice by email before any charge is introduced. No charge shall be levied without the User's separate and prior agreement to the price. No account shall be transferred from a free plan to a paid plan without such agreement. The User may, within the notice period, export its Workflows and terminate its account.

3.4 The User's attention is drawn in particular to section 10, the provisions of which reflect the fact that the Service is supplied without charge. Nothing in that section affects the statutory rights preserved by section 11.

4. Accounts

4.1 An account is required in order to store Workflows. The User must be not less than 16 years of age to open an account.

4.2 The User shall provide a genuine name and a functioning email address and shall keep both current. The email address recorded on the account is the address at which the Provider shall give any notice required under this agreement, including notice under section 3 and section 12, and any notification of a security incident.

4.3 An account is personal to the User. The User shall not disclose its password to any other person nor permit any other person to use its account, and shall notify the Provider without undue delay at legal@pipenode.app upon becoming aware of any unauthorised access.

4.4 The User is responsible for all activity occurring under its account, save to the extent that such activity is attributable to an act or omission of the Provider.

5. User content and licence

5.1 The User retains all rights subsisting in the Workflows it creates and in the material it supplies to them. The Provider asserts no proprietary interest in them.

5.2 The User grants to the Provider a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store, copy and transmit its Workflows to the extent necessary for the provision of the Service, comprising the storage and retrieval of Workflows and their inclusion in backups. The licence extends no further. It terminates upon deletion of the content or closure of the account, save in respect of copies held in routine backups, which expire in accordance with the retention periods stated in the Privacy Policy.

5.3 The licence granted under clause 5.2 passes to any transferee under section 13 upon the same terms and for the same purpose, such passing being necessary to the continued provision of the Service. The licence is not enlarged by any transfer, and clause 5.4 binds any transferee.

5.4 The Provider shall not use Workflows to train machine-learning models, shall not sell them, and shall not analyse them for the purpose of profiling the User. The Provider may access the contents of a Workflow only where necessary to operate, repair or secure the Service, where the User has requested assistance, or where required by law. The Provider's administrative interfaces are constructed to display Workflow names and aggregate counts only.

5.5 The User warrants that it is entitled to supply to the Service all material which it supplies, whether by ownership or by permission, and that the processing of such material does not contravene any applicable law.

6. Provider's intellectual property

6.1 The Service, including the software, design, name, logo and written material comprised in it, is and remains the property of the Provider or of its licensors. This agreement confers a permission to use the Service and confers no proprietary right in it.

6.2 This agreement permits use of the Service as provided by the Provider. It does not permit appropriation of the software. Save to the extent otherwise permitted by law, the User shall not:

• copy, redistribute, rent, resell or host the Service, which prohibition extends to the retention of that part of the Service which executes in the User's browser, comprising its code, its styles and the node catalogue it loads, and to the execution, distribution or service of the same otherwise than through the Service as provided by the Provider. A copy retained for the User's own offline use constitutes no exception, the right conferred being a right to use the Service and not a right to retain a functioning copy of the software;
• decompile, disassemble, deobfuscate or otherwise attempt to derive the source code, structure or method of operation of the Service from the material transmitted to the User's browser, nor defeat, remove or circumvent any technical measure applied by the Provider for the protection of the Service, including the obfuscation of the editor's code;
• represent the Service or any part of it as the User's own product, employ it or anything derived from its examination in the creation of a competing service, or remove or obscure the Provider's name, logo or other branding;
• scrape, crawl or employ automated means to retrieve the application, the node catalogue or other material from the Service beyond that which ordinary use of the editor requires.

6.3 Nothing in this section derogates from any right conferred by law notwithstanding contractual provision to the contrary, including in particular the rights to observe, study and decompile a computer program for the purposes of interoperability conferred by the European Union (Computer Programs) Regulations, and, in the case of a Consumer, the statutory rights preserved by section 11.

7. Permitted and prohibited use

7.1 This section specifies the uses which are prohibited. A contravention of it constitutes a breach of this agreement. Execution occurring upon the User's own device in accordance with section 2, this section is directed principally to material which the User stores upon the Provider's systems or transmits to the Provider.

7.2 Unlawful use

The User shall not use the Service to commit, plan or facilitate any act contrary to law. In particular the User shall not:

• store or process child sexual abuse material. There exists no circumstance in which such use is permitted, and it is the sole category of material which the Provider shall report to An Garda Síochána without prior notice to the User;
• store or disseminate material which incites violence or terrorism, or which incites hatred against persons by reference to a protected characteristic;
• use the Service for fraud, for money laundering, or for the evasion of sanctions;
• use the Service to harass, stalk, threaten or defame any person.

7.3 Personal data relating to third parties

Where the User supplies to the Service personal data relating to other persons, including customer records, address lists or scanned documents, the User warrants that it is entitled to process such data and that it does so lawfully. In particular the User shall not:

• supply data obtained by unauthorised access to any system, by extraction in contravention of the terms of the source, or by acquisition from a person unable to demonstrate lawful collection;
• supply special category data within the meaning of Article 9 of the GDPR, including data concerning health, biometric data, and data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious belief, trade union membership or sexual orientation, unless the User has established a lawful basis for that processing and has informed the data subjects concerned;
• rely upon the Service as a place to keep such data. The material upon which a Workflow operates is not transmitted to the Provider, as provided at clause 2.4;
• write such data into a setting which configures a node, including the strings of a find-and-replace transformation. A setting is stored by the Provider under clause 2.5, and the exemption described in the preceding bullet does not extend to it. Where a Workflow is to operate upon the personal data of another person, the name or other identifier of that person should be supplied as material at the time of the run and not saved into a setting.

Save as provided by clause 2.5, the Provider receives none of the material described in this clause. File contents are read in the User's browser and never sent; the names of those files, the data supplied to a node for processing, and the output of any run are retained in the browser and not stored. What the Provider holds is the configuration of the Workflow described at clauses 2.3 and 2.5, and the Privacy Policy governs it.

7.4 Third-party intellectual property

The User shall not use the Service to infringe copyright, trade marks, patents or trade secrets, which prohibition extends to the removal of watermarks or metadata from material in which the User holds no right, and to the bulk conversion of works which the User is not licensed to convert.

7.5 Integrity of the Service

The User shall not:

• attempt to obtain access to any account or other part of the Provider's systems to which it is not entitled;
• probe, scan or test the security of the Service without the Provider's prior written permission. The Provider invites the reporting of vulnerabilities to legal@pipenode.app and shall take no action against a person making a report in good faith;
• interfere with or impose an excessive load upon the Service, including by denial-of-service attack, automated submission of forms, or scripted creation of accounts;
• circumvent any technical limit or rate limit;
• transmit malicious code, or construct a workflow the purpose of which is the production or distribution of malicious code;
• scrape or employ automated means to extract material from the Service beyond that which ordinary use of the editor requires;
• resell the Service, offer it as the User's own service, or represent its output as originating from a product of the User's own construction.

7.6 Accounts

• An account is personal to one natural person, and credentials shall not be shared.
• The User shall not register an account in the name of another person nor impersonate any person.
• The User shall not register an account for the purpose of circumventing a suspension.

7.7 Consequences of contravention

The Provider's response shall be proportionate to the contravention. The Provider shall ordinarily give notice to the User, state the grounds relied upon, and afford a reasonable opportunity to remedy the matter.

Where the contravention is serious, continuing or unlawful, the Provider may remove the material, suspend the account or terminate it, in each case with immediate effect and without prior notice. Termination is further governed by section 9. The Provider shall make any report required of it by law.

A User wishing to contest a measure taken under this clause may do so by writing to legal@pipenode.app, and the matter shall be reconsidered by a natural person.

7.8 Reporting a contravention

Any person may notify the Provider of use of the Service contrary to this section by writing to legal@pipenode.app, stating what was observed and where. The Provider shall consider each notification and shall inform the person making it of the outcome.

7.9 Variation of this section

The Provider may vary this section from time to time. Where a variation materially reduces the uses permitted to the User, notice shall be given in accordance with section 12.

8. Availability, modification and support

8.1 The Provider gives no undertaking as to any level of availability and, during the beta period, gives no service level guarantee whatsoever. The Service may be unavailable by reason of maintenance, failure, or any cause beyond the Provider's reasonable control.

8.2 The Provider may add, alter or withdraw functionality. Where an alteration would withdraw functionality upon which the User relies or would render a stored Workflow inoperable, the Provider shall give reasonable notice and shall, so far as practicable, afford the User an opportunity to export its work beforehand.

8.3 Support during the beta period is provided by email on a reasonable-endeavours basis and without any undertaking as to response time. Feedback submitted through the editor may be used by the Provider in the improvement of the Service without obligation or payment to the User, provided that the Provider shall not publish the User's name in connection with it without the User's consent.

9. Termination

9.1 The User may terminate this agreement at any time by deleting its account from the settings page, which operation deletes the account and the Workflows stored in it. Deletion is irreversible and the User should export any material it wishes to retain beforehand.

9.2 The Provider may suspend or terminate the User's account where the User is in breach of this agreement, including section 7, where the Provider is required to do so by law, or where the Provider ceases to offer the Service. Save where the breach is material or the law requires immediate action, the Provider shall first give notice and a reasonable opportunity to remedy. Where the Provider terminates for a reason not attributable to the User, including discontinuance of the Service, it shall give not less than 30 days' notice and an opportunity to export Workflows.

9.3 Sections 6, 7, 11, 12 and 15 survive termination of this agreement.

10. Exclusion of warranties and limitation of liability

The User's attention is drawn in particular to this section, which excludes warranties and limits the liability of the Provider.

10.1 Liabilities not excluded

Nothing in this agreement excludes or limits the liability of the Provider for:

• death or personal injury caused by the negligence of the Provider;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• any liability owed to a data subject or supervisory authority under the General Data Protection Regulation;
• any other liability which the law of Ireland does not permit to be excluded or limited.

This clause is stated first because a limitation drawn more widely than the law permits is liable to be held unenforceable in its entirety.

10.2 Exclusion of warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, with all faults, and without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law the Provider excludes all warranties, conditions, representations and terms not expressly set out in this agreement, whether express, implied, statutory, or arising from a course of dealing, custom or trade usage, including without limitation any implied term as to satisfactory quality, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, correspondence with description, quiet enjoyment or non-infringement.

The Provider does not warrant or represent that:

• the Service will be available, uninterrupted, timely, secure or free from error;
• any defect will be corrected, or corrected within any period;
• the Service, or any material obtained from it, is free from viruses or other harmful components;
• the Service will meet the User's requirements, or will operate with the User's files, formats, browser or device, or will continue to perform any function which it presently performs;
• any output of the Service will be accurate, complete, current or fit to be relied upon, as to which see clause 10.3.

No advice or information obtained by the User from the Provider, whether written or oral, creates any warranty not expressly stated in this agreement. No statement made on the Provider's website, in its documentation, or otherwise as to the capabilities of the Service constitutes a warranty that the Service will perform any particular function for the User.

The open-source libraries from which the Service is constructed are supplied under their respective licences, each of which disclaims warranty. The corresponding notices are distributed within the files transmitted to the User's browser. The Provider passes on no warranty in respect of such libraries and gives none of its own.

10.3 Output and reliance

The nodes comprised in the Service are deterministic in operation. That characteristic does not constitute a representation as to correctness. Software contains defects; file formats vary and are frequently malformed; the recognition of text from an image is an estimation; the extraction of tabular data from a portable document format file involves the inference of a structure which the file does not record; and a calculation returns the result of the operation specified rather than the result intended.

The User is responsible for verifying the output of a Workflow before placing reliance upon it. The Provider does not warrant that any output is accurate, complete or suitable for any purpose and, to the fullest extent permitted by law, the Provider shall have no liability for any loss arising from output which proves to be erroneous, incomplete, misread or misconstrued, including where such output has been used in accounts, filings, invoices, reports, contracts, pricing, or any other determination having financial or legal consequence.

The Service shall not be used as the sole basis for any material determination. Where a result carries legal, financial, medical, regulatory or safety consequences, it must be independently verified by a person competent to do so. The Service does not constitute professional advice of any description and is not for use in any application in which failure or error could result in death, personal injury, or damage to property or to the environment.

10.4 The User's own files and equipment

Execution occurring upon the User's device in accordance with section 2, a Workflow operates directly upon the User's files. Where the User's browser supports the relevant facility and the User grants the necessary permission, such operation includes the renaming, overwriting or replacement of files in place. A Workflow which is incorrectly constructed, directed at an incorrect location, or executed more than once may destroy the User's data.

The User is responsible for the effect of a Workflow upon its files. The User should operate upon copies and should maintain backups of any material which it cannot afford to lose. The Provider does not receive such files and holds no copy of them; accordingly no restoration by the Provider is possible and, to the fullest extent permitted by law, the Provider shall have no liability for their loss, corruption or alteration.

10.5 Workflows stored by the Provider

Workflows are stored by the Provider as a convenience and not as a backup service, and may be exported by the User in JSON format at any time. The User is responsible for exporting any material which it cannot afford to lose. Save in respect of restoration from the Provider's most recent backup where practicable, the Provider shall have no liability for the loss, corruption or unavailability of Workflows stored by it.

10.6 Excluded heads of loss

To the fullest extent permitted by law, and whether the claim arises in contract, in tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty or otherwise, the Provider shall have no liability for:

• indirect, special, incidental, consequential or punitive loss of any description;
• loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, custom, opportunity or anticipated savings;
• loss, corruption or alteration of data, or the cost of its reconstitution;
• loss of goodwill or damage to reputation;
• wasted expenditure, or the cost of the User's own or its personnel's time;
• the cost of procuring substitute goods, services or software;
• any loss arising from a determination made in reliance upon output of the Service.

Each of the foregoing heads is severable, and the unenforceability of one shall not affect the others. They apply whether or not the loss was foreseeable and whether or not the Provider was advised of its possibility.

10.7 Aggregate limit of liability

Where the Provider is liable to the User notwithstanding the foregoing, the total liability of the Provider arising out of or in connection with this agreement and the User's use of the Service shall be limited in aggregate to the greater of the sums actually paid by the User to the Provider in the twelve months preceding the accrual of the cause of action, or €100. The said limit applies to all claims taken together and not to each claim separately.

No sum being presently payable for the Service, the figure stated above is the limit which presently applies. The parties agree that it represents a fair allocation of risk in respect of a service supplied without charge.

10.8 Limitation period

Save where the User is a Consumer, notice of any claim must be given to the Provider in writing within twelve months of the date upon which the User became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the circumstances giving rise to it, failing which the claim shall be barred. This clause does not apply to a Consumer, in whose case the statutory limitation periods apply.

10.9 Business users

A User which is not a Consumer accepts the foregoing limitations as a fair allocation of risk in respect of a service supplied without charge, and shall indemnify the Provider against all claims, losses and reasonable costs brought by any third party and arising from the User's use of the Service in breach of this agreement, including section 7.

10.10 Consumers

This section is subject in its entirety to section 11. No provision of it applies to the extent that it would exclude or restrict a right conferred by law upon a Consumer, and in the event of conflict the statutory right prevails. Nothing in this section is intended to exclude liability for a failure to supply a digital service of satisfactory quality where the law does not permit such exclusion.

11. Consumers

11.1 A User acting for purposes outside its trade, business, craft or profession is a Consumer and enjoys rights which cannot be excluded by contract. In particular:

• the statutory rights of a Consumer are unaffected by any provision of this agreement, including those conferred by the Consumer Rights Act 2022 and the European Union (Consumer Information, Cancellation and Other Rights) Regulations 2013;
• any term held to be unfair does not bind the Consumer, and the remainder of this agreement continues in force without it;
• a Consumer may bring proceedings in the courts of its country of residence, and the mandatory consumer-protection law of that country continues to apply notwithstanding section 14;
• a right of cancellation applies in respect of any paid plan subsequently purchased, exercisable within 14 days, the operation of which shall be stated at the point of purchase. No sum being presently payable, there is at present nothing to cancel other than the account itself, which may be deleted at any time;
• where a complaint cannot be resolved between the parties, the Consumer may refer it to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission or to the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. The Provider requests that it be contacted first at legal@pipenode.app.

12. Variation

12.1 The Provider may vary this agreement to reflect a change to the Service, a change in the law, or to correct an ambiguity.

12.2 In respect of a variation which is not material, the Provider shall update this page and the date stated at the head of it. In respect of any variation which materially affects the rights or obligations of the User, including the introduction of a charge, the Provider shall give notice by email not less than 30 days before the variation takes effect. A User which does not accept the variation may terminate its account before that date. Continued use of the Service after a variation takes effect constitutes acceptance of it.

13. Transfer of the agreement

13.1 The Service may be sold or otherwise transferred. The Provider being an individual, the most likely such event is the transfer of the Service to a company formed by the Provider for the purpose of carrying it on, or its sale to another person; a merger or group reorganisation is not presently possible.

13.2 The Provider may assign or novate this agreement, together with its rights and obligations under it, the Service, the software and the data described in the Privacy Policy, to any person acquiring the Service, including a company incorporated by the Provider, and thereafter in the course of any sale, merger or reorganisation of that company. No separate consent or execution by the User is required.

14.3 A transfer under clause 13.2 shall not:

• vary this agreement. The transferee takes the agreement as it stands, including the notice periods, the restrictions upon the use of Workflows in section 5 and the undertakings in section 3. Any subsequent variation constitutes a variation under section 12 and requires the notice there specified;
• permit the introduction of a charge otherwise than in accordance with section 3, which binds the transferee as it binds the Provider;
• transfer any proprietary right in the User's content, which remains vested in the User under section 5, the transferee receiving the same licence as the Provider held and no wider;
• permit the transfer of accounts or Workflows otherwise than to a transferee continuing to operate the Service. The Provider shall not dispose of its user base as a separate asset;
• derogate from the statutory rights of a Consumer, section 11 applying to the transferee as it applies to the Provider.

13.4 The Provider shall give not less than 30 days' notice by email before a transfer takes effect, identifying the transferee and stating its intentions in respect of the Service. The User may within that period export its Workflows and terminate its account, and no material deleted before the transfer shall be transferred. Continued use of the Service after the transfer takes effect continues this agreement with the transferee upon the same terms.

13.5 The User shall not assign, novate or otherwise transfer its rights under this agreement without the prior written consent of the Provider. An account is personal to the User.

14. Governing law and general

14.1 This agreement is governed by the law of Ireland and the courts of Ireland have jurisdiction, save that a Consumer resident elsewhere in the European Union or in the United Kingdom retains the protection of the mandatory law and the courts of its country of residence in accordance with section 11.

14.2 If any provision of this agreement is held to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in force. No failure or delay by the Provider in enforcing any provision constitutes a waiver of it. Assignment is governed by section 13.

14.3 This agreement, together with the Privacy Policy, constitutes the entire agreement between the parties in respect of the Service and supersedes all prior representations and understandings, including the Acceptable Use Policy and the Data Processing Addendum previously published as separate documents. The substance of the former is contained in section 7; the latter governed the Provider's role as a processor for a company account holder, and company accounts no longer exist.

14.4 Enquiries in respect of this agreement should be addressed to legal@pipenode.app.